a Bit of Both
by BunnyRock
Summary: It would be easier to fight the bad guys if for one moment the team could stop fighting each other. A general guardian's fic. As the original work is very much an ensemble piece, I'm writing this as a shifting focus story, focusing on one character or the relationship between two characters per chapter and shifting frequently. One suggested "Awesome mix tape 2" song per chapter.
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue:**

"We'll follow your lead… Starlord"

Peter Jason Quill grinned, roguishly as he powered up the forward thrusters on the _Milano_ for take off as the music blared out of his rebuilt custom speakers. "A bit of both." He declared, and he thrust-off into the sunset, the_ Milano_ rising like a great and terrible bird leaping into the darkling sky-

"Did you have any specifics on this that you would like to share?" asked Drax. "That statement doesn't give any clear plan as to your intentions."

"Question:" asked Rocket "What's this about 'something good'? Are we doing the good thing first, or the bad thing first? Just out of professional interest."

"We're not actually going to do anything bad!" Snapped Gamora. "Peter just meant that in a roughish, lovable outlaw sort of way, Didn't you!" she said, turning to him so suddenly that he nearly ploughed the _Milano_ into Nova-Prime's office out of shock.

"And would the good thing have to be morally proportionate to the bad thing?" asked Drax.

"Proportionate?" snorted Rocket. "We just saved Xandar, I'm banking on that counting as our 'something good' for now. Right? I mean it's twelve _billion_ people, so by my reckoning we would have to do something pretty _d'asted_ horrific to even get close to balancing that out-"

"I do not believe we should be intentionally endangering twelve billion people-"

"Whoa now Drax, that's not what I was suggesting, right? What I'm saying is we're the heroes of the hour! We could get away with pretty much anything! We should seize the opportunity and rob the Xandar Central Bank: it's had the vault ripped wide open from the _Dark Aster's_ crash, and it's only 'cause the city was evacuated that it's not been looted already. We could land on what's left of the roof and be in an out before anyone notices."

"Rocket! That's not what we formed this team for" yelled Gamora. "besides, the Nova Corp re-built this ship for Quill, how do you think they'll feel if we use it to rob them?"

"Surprised."

"That's not what I meant!"

"Hey, I'm as grateful as the next…. One of me…" said Rocket, shifting Groot's pot from one paw to the other to gesture. " that they gave us this ship, but unless you've got a bank account I don't know about, we didn't get the four _billion_ credits we could have for that orb, and on top of that Yondu canned the bounty on Quill, so I'm kinda out of pocket here. All I'm saying is the Nova Corp are likely to be far more forgiving now than if we rob them in a years' time. Besides, they lost a lot of their manpower and equipment in that fight, so now's the best time all round. They're pretty much down to Rhomann Dey and Nova -_prim's_ interns, and they were there to see us off. It was like _eight_ flights of stairs to that launch pad with the elevators out, we could have the money and be out of the atmosphere before Dey gets back to his desk!"

"Those Nova Pilots died to save us, and you want to repay them by stealing from their world!?" asked Gamora, horrified.

"I want to repay the people that I want to repay! In cash! It's not like those guys will need the money now." Exclaimed Rocket.

"Unless their afterlife specifies the bribing of devils to avoid punishment." Said Drax. "Many do."

"Stay out of this!" said Gamora waving a finger. "We can't rob Xandar Rocket! How do you want these people to remember us?"

"Rich!"

"What percentage of our activity do you then propose we spend being good or evil?"

"Oh don't you start that again Drax!" said Gamora. "Quill, you tell these reprobates that we are not robbing Xandar!"

"Hey, nobody calls me reprobate! Quill, you tell this green bald-body that-"

"Quill, What percentage of our time do you suggest we allocate to tasks that could not be classified as either good or bad?"

*Groot waves frantically*

Peter Jason "Starlord" Quill took his eyes of the Xandarian sunset and looked down to his control panel. According to the flight log, it had been exactly 91 second since take off.

Without looking back to his crew, Quill took the headphones for his Walkman from around his neck, and put them over his ears, turning up the volume as far as it would go whilst staring dead ahead out of his cockpit.

It was going to be a long flight.

**Chapter one: cabins **

"Okay team." Said Quill, clapping his hands together to get their attention. The bickering had moved into the_ Milano_'s common area after the first hour or so. "Thank you for flying Starlord airlines. The autopilot is on, the emergency exits are here, there and there, the hole we'll all get sucked out of in an explosive decompression is _there,_ Galley is there, head and particle shower there and there, med-bay down those steps, and in the unlikely event of an un-scheduled planetfall your fellow passengers double as a floatation device."

The "team" stared. Drax looked nonplussed, Gamora confused, and Rocket was staring at Quill with his mouth part-open in stunned horror as if he'd just sprouted an extra head. Mini-Groot , on the other hand, appeared to be loving it, so Quill continued.

"Just a little earth humour to break the ice. _No_, Drax, the ship does not have an icing problem, you can put your hand down."

Drax put his hand down. Quill continued.

"Okay, the autopilot is set for our rendezvous, but it'll be a long flight, and we've got some time to kill. So I figured that as we're all here we may as well get some things straight. Sort out what we're heading there to do, what our plans and goals are, and get some living arrangements sorted now that it looks like you'll be guests on the _Milano_ for a prolonged time. Yes Rocket?"

Rocket kept his paw raised. "Yeah I got a question. _What_ rendezvous?"

"Rocket, do you really think anyone else has that questio-"

"What rendezvous Quill!" chorused Rocket, Gamora and Drax. Mini-Groot waved.

"Okay! Okay… while you were all in the infirmary getting bandaged up or dosed up to the gills or whatever, I had a little chat with Rhomann Dey about some old underworld contacts he busted a while ago. Ones who might have info on Thanos and this whole 'glowing stone o' doom' business. Turns out they're only a few systems over, city called Fairport, and they'll only be there for a short time. So whilst you were all arguing, sharpening knives or re-potting chunks of Groot, I called them up and arranged a meeting."

"Surely this is unnecessary. We already have all the information we could possibly need on Thanos in the form of our green-skinned murder." Said Drax.

"Don't call me that."

"At least it's an improvement on whore." Pointed out Rocket. " 'specially given his lack of metaphorical facility's an' such like meaning that if he calls you a whore he _literally_ means he thinks you-"

"All right!" said Gamora. "Yes, I have info on Thanos. More than just about anyone. But it's not that simple. And who even told you about that Rocket?" asked Gamora. Quill had the good grace to look guilty. Rocket didn't.

"What, you let us in, we surprise him, Drax tries to knife him and gets beaten up, Quill distracts him with his… Quill-ness, I shoot him in the head. We're drinking over his body and sell our story to the press for billions in half an hour, forty min tops." Said Rocket. "Seems simple. I mean, if you've got any unresolved daddy-issues and you take exception to killing him, then you only need to get us in. I'll do it. I'll even give you a discount."

"No one is taking my vengeance on Thanos for me!" declared Drax. "And he would not necessarily beat me up! What happened on Knowhere was an aberration: I had been consuming large quantities of intoxicant liquids with you and what happened afterwards doesn't count!"

"Tell me about it, but you _try_ telling that to the nova-corps and they _still _try to charge you with arson…"

"It's not that simple and for the record, no-one wants to see Thanos dead as much as I do. Your family isn't the only one he's responsible for killing, Drax." Replied Gamora.

"… I mean it was only_ one_ orphanage, and it was run by lascavarian nuns. The kids were better off on the street if you ask me…"

"Shut up Rocket." Said Gamora. "The point is, not only is Thanos one of the strongest beings in the universe and nigh on unkillable, Thanos is smart. He never gave any of his daughters more information that they needed to complete their chosen mission. I don't know any more about his plans than _Groot_, because I didn't need to know anything other than 'Aid Ronan until I tell you otherwise.' I had never even _heard_ of an infinity stone until we wound up with one in the Collectors place."

"Oh yeah, out of interest, is he dead? The Collector I mean?" asked Rocket.

"Who cares?" Said Quill.

"Well, speaking as a long term bounty hunter, when you're indirectly responsible for blowing up a sadistic billionaire's prized stuff, you kinda hope he dies in the process otherwise that can come back to bite you in the ass." Said Rocket, leaning back and throwing a ball up and catching it repeatedly, much to mini-Groot's amusement. "Then again if he's too cheap to pay for decent help he deserves what he gets. Just a point to consider. So basically, Gamora don't know squat? I find that a little hard to believe."

"Surely you could at least locate Thanos base of operations?" asked Drax.

"He has several bases that he uses intermittently to hide his location. His main base on titan is made almost unreachable due to bizarre localised space-time anomalies. He can be reached by various wormholes or localized anomalies, but plotting a safe rout though would require his assistance." Gamora looked to Quill. "We'd either need to get him to come to us, or we'd need something he wanted to get through."

"Which brings us to our contact." Said Quill. "a certain Mr J Star'l'in, reporter. Dey says he's an expert on Thanos, been interested in him for years. Colleting reports, interviewing survivors of attacks or witnesses to assassinations Thanos is suspected of having an hand in, he even approached our broker on Xandar; Dey thinks he heard rumours of an infinity stone and had got old Eyebrows bugged just in case the person he was selling to was Thanos."

"That would probably have worked." Said Drax. "If Thanos had simply attempted to purchase the stone himself instead of sending Ronan after it, he would certainly possess it by now."

"You saying he should have put out a classified add? 'Wanted, stone of doom, no take-backies? Payment and possible murder on delivery?'" asked Quill. He then considered this "Yeah, that would work, I'd have fallen for that: I've answered worse personal ads."

"But instead" said Rocket "he sent Ronan to get an Orb, without telling him what it was, and he eventually betrayed Thanos when he found out. But Ronan sent Nebula, who would eventually betray Thanos, who was replaced by hers truly" said Rocket, pointing to Gamora between throwing and catching the ball. It was making annoying dull _Ker_-_clunk Ker-clunk_ noises as it bounced off the bulkheads. "Who would eventually betray Thanos, but instead failed to get the Orb because somehow one of the universe's top assassins failed to defeat _him_, of all people. No offence Quill."

"None taken."

"Is there a point to this Rocket, or are you just being rude." asked Gamora.

"Oh, there's a point sister. My point is, if this last operation is any sorta' indication of how this Thanos does business, why do we have to do anything? Can't we just wait for the guy to stab _himself _in the back? It must be his turn by now. " _Ker-clink Ker-Clunk _"Then again, if that turns out anything like your fight with Quill he'd probably miss-"

"RIGHT! That's it!" Said Gamora. "You have a problem, Rocket, you spit it out!"

"Hey" he said, holding the ball one-pawed as he held his paws apart in the gesture universally recognised by people other than Drax as 'chill'. "I don't have no problem. I have several _problems_, one of which is, I don't like people doing stuff I can't predict."

"Are _you _calling _me_ unreliable?"

"You couldn't rob _QUILL!_ No offence. There was a four way brawl between you, me, Quill and a literally unarmed Groot and I was the last mammal standing! Me! Without using guns! Other than tazering Quill. I'm just saying it's a band indicator of how competent we are if I'm winning in the brawling stakes, even against him. No offence Quill. And sorry about tazing ya ass." Said Rocket, leaning back, tail resting casually over his legs, throwing the ball again. _Ker-clunk Ker-clunk_

"None taken. If I held a grudge against everyone who tazed me I wouldn't have the time to do anything else."

"So you're saying we can't fight?" asked Gamora, arms folded dangerously. "I was trained for decades to be an assassin, a living weapon. I've got enhancements that easily exceed yours." She eyed the ball _Ker-clunk Ker-clunk_ "Do you know how fast my reflexes are?"

"Pretty good?" said Rocket, disinterestedly. _Ker-clunk Ker-clunk_

_Ker-_

Rocket looked puzzled, paw outstretched to catch as the ball failed bounce back off the bulkhead. He checked the floor, but it was nowhere to be seen. Gamora leaned over and without taking her eyes of Rocket unfolded her arms and opened her hand, revealing a-

"Quantum grenade. Don't worry it's not live." Said Rocket, moving his tail aside to reveal the ball without breaking eye contact. He grinned, nastily.

_"Fun fact: _ I'm alive because I surprise other folk more often than they surprise me. I like you, Gamora: you're a driven killer and I respect that, and you stood by me and fought with me. But you were the _first_ to say that you're willing to die for a cause out of us, and that scares the crap out of me. I like bein' alive: it's pretty much all I do. I don't want a martyr watching my back. And I don't want a maniac watching my back, No offence Drax, or a potted plant, no offence Groot, but at present I'm the tall one in our partnership and that ain't right. The guy I want watching my back is someone like _that_ idiot." he said, pointing. Quill looked behind him to see who Rocket was pointing at and then caught on. "Well Kinda." Sighed Rocket. "The point I'm trying to make is we're all individually _really_ good at what we do, but being able to fight's not _enough_ anymore, we need to work on pulling it all together some. Otherwise we'll _all_ end up in little pots." He said, picking up Groot. "Water." Rocket declared.

"I… You…" Gamora held the grenade, and turned her head sideways, as Rocket waddled over to the tap with Groot. She replayed her hand gestures to herself, the way people do after street magicians confuse them. "I _know_ you didn't see me grab the ball!"

"Yep. Partly because it wasn't a ball. Mostly because I blinked. Come on. Throwing the ball like that? That was annoying. I'm surprised no on tried to grab it before that. You were so careful too" He snickered, turning on the water. "Never looking at the ball in case that gave it away? Bad move. I make the swap, knowing you're watching my eyes not my hands, I throw the grenade, I blink, giving you the chance I know you're waiting for. You take that chance. Good thing you caught it too, not too stable those. Probably shouldn't let one hit the bulkhead."

"Okay." Said Quill. "New ship Rule: no demonstrating important points on teamwork with _unstable quantum grenades!"_

"So stable ones are good?" asked Rocket, half turning to Quill as he held Groot under the faucet.

"No grenades Rocket!"

"Spoilsport. It's like I'm living in a frickin' nunnery." Muttered. Rocket. "But you see my point? Gamora could snap me like a twig, if she wanted. That move in the street, where she took both of Groot's arms of with a sword. Ugg. That scares me: just think of the mess if he'd been made of meat like the rest of us. And Drax with those knives? And Quill and me and Groot in the mix, once he's bigger….We're a pretty badass bunch. If we could actually get the whole teamwork thing to… yanno…_work._ Are you honestly saying that we still couldn't take on Thanos directly and win?" asked Rocket, turning to Gamora. "because if we can't I kinnda like to find out _before_ it kills me."

"Seconded." Said Quill. "I agree with that man. That Racoon… that- look I agree. I'm agreeing with you! What's with the death gaze? It's like an evil care-bear stare! Gamora answer the man….mal. mammal."

"Rocket: us taking on Thanos directly, without knowing what his plan is, would be like insects trying to take down the Milano by hurling themselves at its air intakes: we'd theoretical rob him of a little momentum, but not so much that anyone would notice other that if bits of our mangled, crisped bodies happened to fall out of the sky and into their drinks. With some info on what he wants with the infinity stones, what they are and what they do, we might stand a chance. Might. Without it, It would make us taking on Ronan, if he had the nova corps Yondu, the collector and the prisoners from the Kyln on his side, a walk in the park by comparison."

"With or without our mangled insect bodies falling down onto this park?" asked Drax. "Your metaphor is confusing and I do not like it, try another one."

"What like 'a finger on the throat means death?'" asked Quill.

"Yes, I like that one." Said Drax. Quill facepalmed.

"So without more info on what Thanos is up to we're screwed?" Asked Rocket.

Gamora nodded. "So much."

"And his guy were going to meet has info?"

"Price of fuel, I sure hope so." Said Quill.

"Okay. Next Question." Asked Rocket. "Where's the food, and where do I bunk?"

Quill opened up the narrow draw and the light flickered on. Gamora, Rocket and Drax were all outlined in its light as they leaned over to look at the tight tumble of metal, plastic and folding bedroll inside.

"Oh look. We'll all fit." Said Gamora, in tones of leaden sarcasm.

"Doubtful. I believe Rocket might." Said Drax.

"Bite me, baldy."

"Would that help you to fit?" asked Drax seriously, still examining the draw in some detail. Gamora and Rocket both stared.

"It folds out into a bed!" said Quill. "Dey got Nova to fit them when they rebuilt the ship, you see this ship is-"

"An older model XT-5 Badoon patrol vessel, medium to long range, low to medium payload multi-roll combat vessel, of the type commonly used by pirates such as the ravengers." Said Gamora. She looked to Quill. "Thanos thought a familiarity with most major weapons systems was a required part of any education."

"Um, yeah." Said Quill "Anyway the thing about the _Milano_ is-"

"She was built for long-range recon and patrol, including light bombing against any nice fat enemy merchant shipping that might be hanging about, operating with a crew of pilot, co-pilot, navigator and _weapons officer_." Said Rocket, relishing the term _weapons officer _a little too much. "Built with two bunks in sleeping quarters to the aft, so there's one warm body on helm, one on standby and two at rest at any time, hot-bunking. Earliest models had one bunk, but that doubled as the med bay, so if someone got hurt, where did the rest sleep? Handles pretty well as a fighter if you strip out the torpedo rack from the undercarriage to save on some weight and replace those frickin' Badoon fuel injectors with somein' with a little bite like these ten-eighty's here." He said, patting an ugly bulge in the overhead trunking lovingly. "Yondu might be a hick, but he knows how to treat an engine right."

"He's not a hick!"

"Yeah like you'd know, earth-boy" muttered Rocket under his breath. "Kree teenagers are still dropping by Terra an' probing people for a laugh. So it folds out? Why? We've already got two beds."

"Yeah, which is fine if we were on a long rage patrol like this thing was made for, but we're gonna be on planets a lot, and as much a sleeping in shifts kinda works, I'd like us all to be awake at the _same freaking time_ if we're going to have to fight someone!" said Quill. "Plus, you know. Some people might have issues with hot-bunking."

"So we can't sleep in shifts, fine I get that, but surely there's enough room to share." asked Rocket.

Gamora, Quill and Drax stared. "What?" asked Rocket, nonplussed. "Seems like there more than enough room on one of those beds.

"You _really_ don't get people, do you?" asked Gamora.

"Woah now, I think that you know, maybe he has a point." Said Quill, truing to Gamora. "I mean it is an efficiency thing after all and you know, we should hear him out- OWWWW! A dead arm, oh come on!" said Quill, grabbing his arm and hopping around. "I thought an assassin would be more mature!"

"Hey I never said you two lovebirds should share: I thought maybe Quill and Drax might make a cute couple." Said Rocket. "Funny how your mind went there."

"He has a point." Said Quill, who then said "OWW, quit it!" as Gamora deadened his other arm.

"Just you wait, Quill!" Gamora hissed. "I'm not sharing with them, Rocket, and if you understood real people you'd know why!"

"Oh, and I don't understand _real people_ now, is it? Since when did I stop counting as a _real _person?"

"Anyway!" said Quill, changing the subject. "I figured we'd need some more space so I had Nova fit two of these fold flat _AKia _beds. Put a folding divide in the middle of the med-bay bunk-room too. All we need to do is fold them out…" said Quill grasping with both hands and pulling. "Fold them out…" he said, fumbling with two dead arms. He paused for a second. "Oh wait, I know what was as doing wrong." He said, lightly. He then begun violently shaking the bed and pulling at it furiously. "Oh come on!"

"You need to twist that bit." Said Gamora pointing.

"I do not believe that is the case." Said Drax. "I believe that bit needs to be raised up first."

"Which bit?" said Quill. "That bit!" said Gamora and Drax at the same time, pointing to different bits. They all looked at each other for a moment. Drax grabbed the bed alongside Quill, and they both begun pulling at it furiously. "I'm going to get the instructions!" said Gamora, as she stalked off towards the med-bay/bedroom.

Rocket watched amused for a few moments, before getting bored and turning to the other side of the common area. An identical fold out draw-bed had been added. He looked at it. He looked at the wall. The walls of the common area were high-strength wire mesh: you didn't want people leaning on all the various gadgets in the wall, but most of them were air cooled and anyway, it saved on weight compared to sheet metal. He looked up, and noted that the reinforcement rings of the ships scaffolding were perforated, not solid metal: they had circular holes punched out to save weight. He stuck a clawed finger delicately through the mesh, turned it around, and gave it a sharp tug. He then put down Groot and repeated it with the other hand, testing the mesh until he appeared satisfied. He then went and got the meagre sack the contained all his worldly possessions, discounting those that he hadn't stolen yet, pulled out some equally heavy gage wire and a pair of tiny folding pliers made especially for his clever little paws, and got to work. Behind him flat-pack furnishing happened.

"Where the hell has Gamora got with those instructions?"

"I'm right here!"

"Okay had them over… these instructions are in Kree!" said Quill. He handed them back to Gamora. "You read them."

"Okay: to start, insertee tabee A into slotee b"

"… what the heck is tab a?"

"I believe that might be it!"

"Drax, that's my finger!"

Rocket finished bending the wire into hooks, and started getting out the roll of thinner wire and cutting it into lengths.

"…After inserting Lug E into groove g, take leaver ₪ and twist upwards vigorously…"

"Oww oww oww! Finger, Drax!"

"Sorry."

"It's okay, let's try that again. Oww oww _oww!_ Try that again with the _actual lever!"_

"Sorry."

Rocket twisted the last wire into place, and taking the final two hooks in hand, started to climb.

"Okay, everyone together now, on my mark. One two… three!" Quill pulled on three. Gamora and Drax, who had both been waiting for him to say "mark" watched as the handle he was pulling on came off in his hands and he went over backwards. They then looked at each other, and pulled together. The bed folded out neatly. Quill jumped back up and started slapping them on the backs.

"Whoo! Okay go team. Good… good team stuff team. Okay, now that we've got that sorted, know how it's done, we can do yours in no time Rocket." Said Quill turning around. He and the rest of the crew stared.

Rocket's Main Gun, the Hadron Enforcer, and a sinister back box that looked suspiciously like the computer core from the _Dark Aster _and been neatly hung from wire hooks threaded through the opposite wall, and strapped down with the monomolecular retractable cords that Quill as a terran would always think of as "Bungee cords," to stop them floating off in the event that the artificial gravity failed. The rest of Rockets stuff, all much lighter, had been neatly wired in place around these three items with thin twists. Rocket was nowhere to be seen_. Click_. Quill looked up just in time to see Rocket clamp on the second home-made cambina and swing effortlessly into the hammock now hanging between the ships reinforcement rings, booting up his info-glass to read this month's _rayguns and fuel cells_ as he did. They stared.

"What?" he asked. "Ain't you never seen a guy read in bed before?"

"You were just so fast to do that! Well." Said Quill. "I guess if you don't want it, Groot can have the other bed when he's grown out of the pot."

"Nah, he sleeps sitting or standing up: something about his xylems stop working if he don't. Big baby. Besides, he's on it now. Thanks' for the work bench, by the way." Said Rocket. Quill and the others looked down. The metal and plastic tubing of the bed's structure had somehow been repurposed into a workbench, complete with a beach mounted vice that Quill was pretty sure he'd never seen on his ship before. Groot sat happily basking under a sunlamp next to the vice, also bungeed in place.

"I take it food's in the fridge?" asked Rocket.

The team ate what was objectively a pretty good meal in stony silence. Well, Quill, Gamora and Rocket ate in stony silence: Drax seemed pretty oblivious to it once food was put in front of him, and Groot didn't eat so he just played floral centrepiece, because he seemed to get upset if separated from Rocket.

(_"How can you tell?" asked Quill. "He can't even talk."_

_"Shows what you know." Answered Rocket, evenly. "You can't even listen.")_

Part of the silence was Gamora and Rocket's argument from earlier, and Quill was very aware that they were probably the two most dissimilar personalities on the craft and would _never_ see eye to eye on some things. Part of it everyone's anger at him when he answered all their questions about their contact on Fairport with "I don't know, Dey gave me a bar he hangs out in and a mug shot, we'll _look_ for him." Part of it was the sleeping arrangements: due to Quill's 'reputation' Gamora had decided, for now, to take a shift at the helm that meant that the two of them were sharing a bedroom only for the moments when he was going to bed and she was getting up. Part of it was the ridiculous fold down dining table that forced your knees into your spine if you were taller that Rocket (and, currently, Groot). Mostly, however, it was the food.

Ronan's attack on Xandar city had left the civic infrastructure pretty much wrecked. The evacuation had worked and civilian casualties were light, all things considered, but the CBD was a wreck and there were still far too many office workers stuck in the city when the power to the mag-trains failed. That and people flooding the inner city hospitals, there were still a lot of mouths to feed in the city, and no produce reaching the shops. Nova had been as efficient as always, shipping in the disaster relief wonder team of little white tents, silver blankets, water purification tabs, the super-nutritious miracle that was GeGeNut butter to feed the hungry, and epi-pens to stab the allergic because the GeGeNut is a harsh mistress at times. The nova corps was good at what it did, but still food supplies were more than sufficient in volume but severely limited in choice. As heroes of the hour Quill and the team had eaten pretty well, but as perishable goods perished he'd had to make a call. The fruit and pastry they were eating was the contents of the buffet table at one of Nova-Prime's ridiculously early morning de-briefing sessions, and had been kindly offered to them to take with them when she realised that not a word she said was being heard so long as the table was there distracting everyone. Quill could have filled the ship with more of the same, appropriated from Nova's offices, but he realised that life as a criminal hadn't paid all that well and he had no high expectations of life as a hero, so he'd stuffed every corner of the ship he could with Nova Corp "Macroscopic Rations, Emergency" packs and commercial long-life sculpted protein. However good a meal, knowing it's your last before a long stint of MRE packs and protein bars can kill the mood. However the empty space in the fridge left when Quill decided to take shelf-stable rations hadn't gone to waste: Nova had kept them in a hotel throughout their de-briefing, and what with the city still largely evacuated they had the place mostly to themselves. Dey had to cover his eyes with shame as they shovelled the contents of a half hundred min-bars onto the ship, plus a keg of Asgarian brandy Rocket "Found" on one of his late night jaunts. If Thanos didn't kill them then they were at least giving cirrhosis an outside chance.

After Dinner, Quill gave up and went to bed. He just hoped they made the night without anyone murdering anyone else.

Gamora woke with a yelp and clutched at her eye. For a dizzying vertiginous moment she wasn't sure where she was. Then the dream faded, and she realised that she was clutching her sword in the other hand. Shaking, she put it back. She looked over to Quill's empty bed: he kept his area surprisingly neat. She was glad he hadn't seen that. Sweating, she sat up and rubbed at her eyes until the image faded from her mind. It took quite some time before Thanos's grinning face left her.

Unable to get back to sleep, Gamora decided she needed water.

Moving quietly, she headed for the galley. The communal areas of the ship were small, and she had to squeeze past Drax and Rocket's area to get to the faucet. She grabbed a relatively clean glass, poured, and downed it. She poured again. Finding the clean glass was the hardest part, the galley was a mess, dishes unwashed despite the fact that Quill promised to do them, MRE packs piled in random heaps, the fridge door was even open. Gamora moved to close it with an exasperated snort, until she saw the paw.

Rocket peered out from behind the door, suspiciously. She realised that she still hadn't got used to keeping an eye out for someone three-foot-nothing tall. She turned back to the sink. He turned back to the fridge. She realised she must look a mess. That said, in the bleary light of the fridge, Rocket didn't look any better. He was wearing a child's-sized pair of white and blue boxer shorts worn back-to-front to accommodate his tail via the fly, and a frown. The scarring on his back and the level of fur loss was prominent under such conditions. As were his enhancements.

"Does it hurt?"

"Huh?" asked Gamora.

"That orbital implant. It's slightly misaligned. Does it hurt?" asked Rocket, staring intently into the fridge. He squinted at some of Quill's Tupperware. It squinted back, so he returned it to its shelf.

Gamora took her hand away from her eye. She hadn't realised she'd been rubbing the implant.

"No, no it never does it just-"

"Just feels like it should, yeah." Said Rocket. "Like you've been given novocaine or some shit. No… like you haven't, because there no pain to mask, just fells there should be. I dunno. Like a void." He glanced slyly at Gamora out of the corner of his eye. "What's with you sneaking about in the middle of the night? You spying?"

Gamora was tempted to ask what it was to him if she was, but she was still feeling shaken from the dream and in no mood for this shit so she settled for a non-comitial "Couldn't sleep."

"Figures. Seeing as you're awake and all." Said Rocket, pulling out a carton from the fridge door and helping himself to the other clean glass. He kept the fridge door between them at all times, like an enamelled DMZ.

"Why are you up." Asked Gamora. Rocket smiled.

"Couldn't sleep. Water's okay but frankly, if you can't sleep nothing's going to beat the old all-purpose spacers insomnia cure." He said pouring. "Blue milk. Fresh from the moisture farm." He held the carton out to Gamora. "Want some?"

Gamora snorted as she took the carton, weighed it carefully, and put it on the side. "Kind or a Hockey cure all. Does that actually help you sleep?" she asked, turning back to Rocket.

"Does if you make it my way." He said, pouring the contents of a minibar liquor bottle into his glass. He held one out and shook it at her temptingly. She bit her lip, then shook her head. "Probably shouldn't."

"Huh? Oh, no, this one's for me too. They distil this stuff from tubers: Ya gotta shake them otherwise you get this oily scum on the top. Surprised it doesn't curdle the milk, really." Said Rocket, lifting the glass to his lips and downing half of it in one gulp. With her enhanced hearing, Gamora could hear the servos in his arm as he raised the glass.

Gamora watched. "How…How much work did they do?"

"On me?"

She nodded. Rocket shrugged. _Gee, What makes you think I've had work done? Has my cosmetic surgeon been shooting off his mouth to the paparazzi again? Well, Ain't standards just slipping everywhere sister. Can't even trust real people these days. _ Said Rocket, which was why it came as a complete surprise to him then the words that actually came out his mouth were:

"Dunno. Ain't sure. Is this fruit? Is fruit supposed to be this color?"

"You don't remember?"

"Not all of it: wasn't exactly _me_ when they started. No real basis fur' comparison." He put the glass down and flexed his arm, watching his fingers move and cast long shadows in the cold light of the fridge. "Sometimes, it's thinking about what I must have been before they started. Other times it's wondering whether or not they ever_ finished_, and I don't know what scares me more. What keeps you up at night? We can both pretend we just 'couldn't sleep', but frankly you ain't falling for that and I don't see why I should pretend to for your sakes." he stopped and turned to her. "What is it gets you real people up at 0300 standard?"

Gamora looked at Rocket, searching his face for some sort of trap. Was he being honest with her, or was this another game. "Nightmares." She said. "I have bad dreams." He regarded this dispassionately for a moment, and then nodded. Based on the medical reports she had read at Nova, she guessed he could at least partly smell if you were dissembling. "You're right Rocket; I apologise if I've ever implied you are a lesser life form, and just because we argue that's no reason to be childish about this and pretend we don't have problems out of some sort of misplaced bravado." She said.

"Misplaced what?" asked Rocket, suspiciously. Gamora mentally re-adjusted _(highly intelligent =/≠ formally educated, not Drax so can use metaphor, not Quill so don't pre-screen for childish innuendo)_ and spoke again.

"We shouldn't lie to each other just because we want to look big. Not on this ship." She ran this though her metal filters again "That's not a height crack." She added. "I have nightmares about what Thanos did to me. Did to my family. Even now. I cope pretty well, but that's it. I'm coping, not fixed."

"Well, if it helps, neither am I. Well, there was this one veterinarian who offered once, but turned out he meant something different. Words were exchanged. And Tasers. Anyway, yeah. Thanks for sharing your…. Stuff." Said Rocket. Gamora looked at him. Clearly this wasn't enough so she prompted "and you know Rocket, if you ever need to talk-"

"Then thank the _stars_ I've got Groot. Look, I see what you're trying to do and I'm grateful, and yeah, I'll admit I'm pretty _spectacularly_ screwed up. No shame in admitting it, and I'm sorry I was trying to bait ya' an all earlier. But can we just, I dunno, settle for some awkward silences? I think we just need one of those unspoken understanding understandings at night and then we can go back to sniping at each other by day. "

"If that's what you want, Rocket."

"Yeah well, what we want and what we get ain't met up so far. Why start now? I mean, yeah I'd like to be normal but _no-one's _normal: Look." Rocket dropped his stance and went into a classic gunfighters pose and drew on Gamora. She had a kitchen knife in her hands before she even registered that he wasn't wearing any guns.

Rocket pointed a finger at her sadly and said "Pow. See what I mean? We fought together, you're part of the closest thing I have to family, uggg, I can't believe I just said _that,_ and yet when we see something like that, the instincts from our old lives kick in. You still watch my jugular and I still track your centre-mass, let's not pretend we've not noticed. You still have nightmares about your family and me about… well. I want to think that talking about it can, I dunno, fix things and make people into better people. I want that. But _everyone_ in this galaxy is at least in part what the world _makes_ them into, good or bad, whether they like it or not."

He made a rapid two-fingered pointing gesture back and forth between them "Pretty much literally in our cases."

"I can't think like that Rocket. I'm sorry, but I have to believe that we're more than that."

"I know. What's worse, I'm pretty sure that you at least are. Goodnight."

"Goodnight Rocket." Gamora took her glass of water and made her way back to her bed. As she was about to leave the kitchen area Rocket called out and she stopped.

"Gamora?"

"Yes Rocket?"

"You, you remember your family well? Think before you answer. Do you remember what _happed _to them, or do you actually still have any good memories of what it was like before that?"

"I… I remember a lot. Not all, but I remember them, the good times, yes."

"Does… does that make_ it_ better or worse? I mean you've lost more, yeah, but at least you know…"

"It?"

"Knowing that there's just you. Knowing that…. That you're the only one. You're the last of your people. And I'm… well. We're both us. Just us. All alone."

Gamora came over and, not quite sure why, knelt and hugged her shipmate.

"You're not alone Rocket."

"….. thanks.

Now let go of me before I bite you. Or Someone sees. Seriously. That's enough."

He said as he looked around desperately, making sure no one was watching. He caught a face looking at him and panicked momentarily, but it was just a missing persons on the milk carton. He froze up and didn't hug back, but made no move to escape.

"If you let go now I'll help you look for that bravado-thingy you lost. It's probably under the fridge." He attempted, followed but the ever popular. "Hey, I think I know that guy on the carton. Biting is still an option, by the way."

Gamora stood up, smiling. She was pretty sure the bit about biting was a joke, but still. Rocket practically fled back to the fridge and busied himself with ignoring what had just happened. "Awww hell." He said as she walked down to her room. She smiled, confident she had reached out to him. Rocket raised the carton to eye height. "There was a _reward? _Shoot: If I'd known that then I wouldn't have." He grumbled as he shut the fridge and vaulted back into bed. Within two minutes he was out, and sleeping more peacefully than he had in months.

In the cockpit up the steps from the kitchenette, Peter Jason Quill smiled to himself in his pilots chair and turned on his Walkman. Small steps.

**Awesome Mix Tape 2 Track:** _Herman's Hermit's -There's a Kind of Hush (all over the world)_


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: a Quiet Drink (part one, Aperitif)**

When you live with people, you get to know them. When you live with people, particularly in a home that is not quite big enough for them, you _really_ get to know them. Particularly, you get to know in exactly which way they are dicks.

Quill was moderately untidy. Gamora's tidying drove him up the wall. But that was nothing to Drax, who kept everything so painfully tidy Gamora was afraid to move or touch his possessions lest she upset things. And no-one, _no one_ wanted to touch Rocket's things. He kept his guns so obsessively cleaned that you couldn't eat without suddenly finding a gun being striped on the table next to you, but everything else was a mess so awful and so tangled that no-one dared touch the mix of half eaten food, part built bombs, random shiny objects and gods knows what else that was rapidly accumulating wired to his wall. There was a pattern to it, if you looked: bomb parts radiating out in lines from the Hadron enforcer, computer parts from the computer core, gun parts from his guns, and a big circular void between the three of them. There was a logic to it, but no-one really wanted to know what it meant _(Quill sometimes swore the bits moved on their own when no one was looking)._

Gamora talked in her sleep, Drax talked to his knives, Rocket talked too loudly, Quill too much. Drax physically couldn't fit in the particle shower without someone to slam the door from the outside for him, something he always apologised for, because it embarrassed him. Rocket couldn't reach the controls of the shower and had to get someone to lean in though the part open door eyes-closed and switch it on for him, something he never once thanked people for, because it embarrassed him. Drax showered twice daily. Rocket only if he got engine oil or something else sticky on his fur, which given he didn't sweat wasn't as bad as it sounded.

Quill was a lazy cook, strictly junk food and MRE fuelled, with the occasional protein shake to mix it up. Gamora could identify a dozen different wild foods and prepare them safely in any environment due to her survival training, but everything she cooked tasted exactly the same. Drax was a surprisingly excellent cook _(Both Rocket and Gamora suggested independently to Quill it was because he must have cooked for his dead family, and whilst Quill agreed it was possible, no-one dared ask)_ but was soon handicapped by the lack of non MRE ingredients. Rocket would eat _anything_ and didn't seem to even notice how it was cooked, although he still complained, always, and had a very annoying habit of taking any food that could survive immersion in water and taking it and running it under the faucet and running his paws over it to check for imperfections before he would eat it. Gamora washed her own dishes, but refused to wash others on principle, although she talked about washing dishes a lot and why other people should stop living in their own filth, Quill. Drax usually ended up doing the washing, although they we rapidly running out of plates and were likely to remain in that state until anyone summoned the courage to confront Rocket's wall o' junk and reclaim the crockery he was curating there.

Drax, for all his talents had no skills whatsoever that were of any use when he was stuck on a spaceship. So he fretted. Constantly and about anything. There were after all only so many times you could sharpen your knives and bench-press weights, fuel cells, heavy objects, and shipmates. Gamora knew a dozen ways to sabotage a ship of this class but few ways to fix or maintain one, and as much as it pained him to say it, Quill had to admit that within seconds of stepping aboard for the first time Rocket had probably known more about the_ Milano_ than he ever would. There was no job on-ship that Rocket couldn't do, and no job that he would do for free: within two days, Quill owed him, by his own hazy estimate, about twice the _Milano's_ unit value, a kidney, and a strict no-laughing policy for an hour a day when Rocket sung to Groot, convinced it was helping him to grow. If the secondary water filter broke as well, then Quill would owe an hour's singing too.

Quill got to bed late and got up late, Drax rose and went to bed painfully early, Gamora went to bed late and got up early. Rocket didn't seem to have any circadian rhythm that anyone could work out, knapping and working, sleeping all day or working a good 36 hours on some gadget without food or sleep if he felt he needed to, and Groot didn't sleep as such, more rested. Drax snored. Gamora snored worse _("It's like a buzz saw!" Quill told Rocket. "Speak for yourself." Muttered Rocket)_ Rocket made a high birdlike twittering if you woke him suddenly, everyone had nightmares, some worse than others, and _no-_one on ship functioned without at least two mugs of caffeine in the morning: Quill couldn't focus, Drax wouldn't talk, Rocket was surly, Gamora murderous. And to top it off, after about a day without the pleasant distraction of Ronan trying to murder them all, Quill's _continual _music, no matter how good it was, got very, very annoying.

"Hey happy campers, we've made our outer marker, and we'll be hitting the atmosphere and entering Fairport's' airspace within the hour." Said Quill. Everyone bar Groot glared. They were behind schedule and no-one wanted to say it, but they would be lucky if their contact was still there. Nova had been jumpy about unexpected ship movements following the attack on Xandar, and random patrols, pickets and checkpoints had stretched a 48 hour flight into an 89 hour one. Apparently the news that they were heroes of the hour hadn't spread beyond Xandar yet, and the Milano's Ravengers colors, Gamora's know association with Thanos, Drax's arguing with patrols and Rocket hailing nova patrols and telling that they were the one who failed to stop Ronan's ship entering the atmosphere and to quit blocking the frickin' way, had got them pulled over by every single nova vessel, all of whom had called Nova Prime to confirm that yes really, these guys were pardoned. Some had called Nova more than once, just to check it wasn't a trick. "So grab your stuff and be ready for some shore leave." Quill added ignoring the bad vibe, and Gamora and Drax went to get their blades.

"About frickin' time." Muttered Rocket, glaring intently at Groot as he leaned in with a water spray. "Any longer in this can and I'd be chewing my own tail off out of boredom. Quit it." He said to mini-Groot, as he tried to hug Rocket's snout for the third time in forty seconds. "Hey I'm trying to work here. You want your breakfast or not? I made your favourite: two-percent solution ammonium nitrate with trace elements. Ya gonna play around at meal times and I'll go back to that nasty urea-based fertilizer you hated so much. Hey, hey, eat your phosphorus and manganese! 'caus if you don't your leaves will go all yellow, idiot." Rocket sighed. "Remind me to by some bone-meal while we're out Quill. Oh, and we could do with a new osmotic membrane for the water-reclamation system."

"Why, is the old one broken?"

"No, dummy, I just had this crazy idea that we needed a back-up because it's how the ship makes all our fresh water and removes CO2 from the_ air_ we breathe, and because the slot in the engine bay for the back-up unit is filled with empty beer cans and pornography."

"Is it expensive? Can we afford it?" asked Quill quickly.

"It's expensive. Very. As to affording it…" Rocket made a sort of see-saw gesture with his paws. "That kinda implies you planed on paying for it. Open market, 20k, but I can get you one for three."

"Uh-huh? And would this then result in us getting chased out of town by the cops?"

"Don't worry, they couldn't chase us far. Not without an osmotic membrane."

"I'll pass Rocket. How's it coming along with Groot? We could do with the muscle sooner rather than later." Said Quill. While Rocket was distracted talking to Quill, Mini-Groot seized the opportunity and started burrowing his face into the fur of Rocket's cheek and hugging furiously.

"Yeah. He's a terrifying walking death machine right now." Said Rocket in a completely flat tone as mini-Groot made happy little sighing noises into his face "Oh help. I'm a goner. The humanity."

"That bad?" asked Quill. Rocket patted mini-Groot affectionately and then pulled away. He went over to the faucet to re-fill the spray. "He seems to be coming along okay, growing quickly. But don't expect to see him backing you up in a fight anytime soon."

Quill nodded. "Yeah, but he's regenerating really well. It's amazing to see him grow back from a twig like that." Quill paused, uncertain. He was straying into getting-disintegrated-by-a-deranged-furball territory here but he pressed on anyway. "You, yanno, you seemed pretty messed up when he… when he…"

"Died?" asked Rocket, calmly. Quill nodded and continued quickly, getting it out there whilst Rocket was holding a weapon no deadlier than a water-spray. "Yeah, I mean you were a _wreck_ for a while there, and then you planted him in that little pot and suddenly he's growing again. It just seemed so strange that you'd get so upset if you knew he could grow back."

Rocket muttered something Quill didn't hear. "Huh?" Quill inquired.

"I didn't know he could grow back."

"What?" Asked Quill, convinced he hadn't heard that right.

"I said I** _didn't know he would grow back!_ **Ya happy now?" yelled Rocket. "Sheash, you want me to spell it out for you? I had no idea. None. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened to me and to be honest, it's kinda freaking me out."

"What, what? Then, then how did you know to plant him? To try and grow him back?"

"I didn't. I was desperate! I'd just lost the only person I'd ever really been close too! I was going crazy and I had nothing to lose. I just couldn't bear to be without him so I tired the sort of stupid, desperate _oh please wake up mommy, I know your fickin' __**head's fallen off**__ but please get up I'm scared mommy_ _**crap **_that you see idiot kids doing when they have _no_ idea how death works and can't _cope!_ I did it because I'm weak, ya happy? I had no idea it could work, and no expectation of this panning out, and you know what, he started to grow back again just in the nick of time: I was pretty fucking close to planting myself in the dirt as well; from the balcony of our hotel suite." He put the water spray down, but still didn't look at Quill. "and now, I've got a pot-bound toddler on my paws, and I've never been good at gardening, and I'm scared, and I have no idea what I'm doing, and I don't even know if this is _my_ Groot, or if this is just how they reproduce and this is a _new_ Groot and the one I knew is _dead_, or if he' remembers me or not, or if the not-talking and sitting in the pot are like a baby stage or if this is just it now and he'll never walk or speak and he's the equivalent of paralyzed for his species and he'll just be a frickin' vegetable for the rest of his life." Rocket wiped a tear away, and then appeared to realize what he'd just said.

"More of a vegetable. Whatever, you know that I meant. Anyway just a friendly head's up, if he doesn't remember me, I'm gonna kill you all in your sleep. I like you guys, you guys have been good to me, but he did this to save you guys, and he's worth ten of you so, Yanno, nothing personal."

"Uh-huh?" said Quill, arms folded and looking at Rocket. Rocket stared back for a moment and then grunted and stalked out "Okay! He wouldn't want that and you know it. He did this to save us all and I've gotta respect his sacrifice, stupid frickin' guilt. But if he's a retard now I swear I'm gonna shoot you in the dick Quill! In the D_iiii_ick!" yelled Rocket in an echoing voice as he stalked off to get his guns. Drax and Gamora passed him in the corridor, and looked to Quill questioningly.

"It's nothing. I think Rocket's suffering from first time parenting nerves or something."

Drax nodded. "For Groot. I was much the same when my daughter was in her first year."

"What? A misanthropic furry little Prima-Dona? I hope not." Said Quill. "Anyway, Touchdown time in T-minus one hour. Get to it team."

"If it's touchdown in one hour you don't need to say _time_ before the t-minus bit. The t stands for time" said Gamora. "Touchdown-minus one hour the first time you say it, and then t-minus from that point onwards once you've established what you're referring to."

"Oh. Really? Wow. Now I feel stupid. Oh wait, no I don't, you must have had me mistaken for someone who c_aaaaaaa_ares." Said Quill, theatrically storming off after Rocket to get his blasters. Gamora facepalmed. "Idiots."

Drax looked confused. "In your hand? Does your palm need to be that close for you to see them?"

Mini-Groot waved. This was the best morning ever.

Quill stood in the common area of the ship, as his crew tooled up. He'd fought with them during the incident with Ronan, travelled with then to Knowhere and back again, escaped from the galaxy's highest security prison with them, and brawled with them in the streets of Xanda's capitol, but this would be the first time he lead them out of the ship on a mission as their captain. He felt strangely proud as he surveyed his crew. Right up until he actually got a good look at them.

"Oh come on guys! We're going to a bar to look for someone and talk to them! Do you really need that many weapons? What is that? And that, I don't even know what _that_ is, but seriously, you look like you're expecting World War three!"

"Your world has only had two wars?" asked Drax "You Terrans must be a very peaceable people."

"Yeah, that actually kind of admirable." Said Gamora, looking both shocked and strangely guilty as she looked at her swords.

"Especially as we've established that it's a planet of outlaws." said Drax. "Clearly people were too busy trying to maintain internal law and order to attack other polities." Sometimes, just sometimes, Quill wasn't sure if Drax was entirely literal, or just the most sarcastic creature that breathed.

"Yeah, we're a real swell folk. You should see the holy land." Said Quill, reclaiming that title. "It sickens me to even be with you." He said, strapping on his blasters.

"You have an entire land that holy? People there must be incredibly tolerant to others." Said Drax "and you must be a_ spectacularly _mentally disturbed individual by the standards of such a pacifistic race."

"I blame TV."

"Pussies." Said Rocket. "I've been in more wars than that." Said Rocket, wrapping his tail in Velcro. The others stopped and stared.

"Rocket, what are you doing?" asked Quill, in the slightly afraid tones of someone really doesn't want to know the answer but has to check anyway.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" muttered Rocket through a full mouth as he struggled to bite off the end of the roll.

"You appear to be using the self-adhesive splint-tape to bandage the base of your tail." Said Drax, helpfully. "Are you injured?

"Nope. But with luck others might end up that way: 'side from prison screws, bouncers at bars are _the _laziest security personnel in the galaxy, and even good security don't always check the tail in a pat-down." Said Rocket cheerfully opening up a kit-roll filled with knives, knuckle-dusters and miniature firearms and gazing over it longingly. "You'll be _amazed_ what you can openly carry through security if you're willing to Velcro it to your ass. Ah." Rocket picked up a six-inch rod of matt anodized metal that drank the light evilly and weighted it appraisingly. "That'll do."

"What manner of weapon is that?" asked Drax, and Gamora and Quill leaned in close for a good look. Rocket grinned, and flicked his wrist towards Quill.

_snick._

Quill flinched back. The rod had telescoped out to four foot and nearly taken his eye out in the process. He flinched back again when the end snapped into a two pronged fork, and spat crackling white lightening arcing between the two points. _Tzzzzzzzzzt!_

"Shit me!" he exclaimed. Rocket's grin got wider.

"Yeah, it has that effect on people. Shock-prod. 15,000 volts. Smart-chip in the handle, bio-scanner in the tip. Tailors the amps to the current target, ninety-nine point six per cent non-lethal, or your money back. Saurus-Farmers use them to move stubborn bulls along and stay out of trampling range. I have it for the same reasons; don't have to get up close and personal with some big S.O.B. with a longer reach and more muscles than me who wants to introduce my teeth to the curb. Plus I can get tall people in the face. That's always nice." He said, snapping it shut with another practiced flick and tucking it neatly away into the folds of the Velcro.

"And you Velcro that to your tail?" asked, Quill, incredulously. After the Kyln, he'd seen enough shock-prods to last him a lifetime.

"Well we can't all pull off a purse, loverboy."

"It's a satchel!" yelled Quill. No one cared.

" Most unusual. Where did you acquire such a weapon?" asked Drax. Rocket shrugged. "Had it as long as I can remember." He said.

"Well, if Fairport's anything like I remember it from when the Ravagers were here, chances are you'll not have much trouble even with your main gun. Not much law: I remember this being a rough town." Said Quill.

"That should not present undue difficulty" said Drax. Gamora Nodded.

"Rough? Aww shoot." Said Rocket, lifting his main gun off the wall and cocking it dramatically. "And I went and got all dressed up fancy."

* * *

><p>"What a hole." Exclaimed Rocket, for the fifth time in an hour.<p>

"Yes, the road maintenance here is terrible. That pot hole could endanger groundcar users."

Rocket looked sidewise at Drax, but didn't comment. He looked around the city with his gun crooked in his arm like a solder at a check-point: lazy, but ready. If he felt nervous without Groot to back him up, Drax couldn't detect it. If anything, Rocket was more worried about leaving Groot alone in the ship than he was for himself searching the city's neon underbelly.

_("Why have we got to leave the holo-cine on for him?" complained Quill, standing on the exit ramp and checking his watch for the ninth time. "Because" said Rocket. "I don't want him to feel lonely. And I hate for him to miss 'Galactically Challenged.' Does this dirt feel too damp to you?")_

Drax looked around. "This city does not worry you?" he asked. A scantily clad female Xandarian appeared to enter into an altercation with a drunkard, until a very elaborately dressed male emerged from the shadows on an alleyway to intervene on her behalf. Drax felt happy to know that even in this deprived area people would look out for each other: Rocket watched the woman's eyes and saw just how much more afraid of her pimp she was than of the drunk.

"Here? Nah. I like it fine. When I first started making my way in the world, I lived someplace like this." Rocket said, noting a derelict in a doorway. "Latter I fell on hard times."Rocket paused, and sniffed the air. "Quill and Gamora." He said, turning his head, and moving sideways along the edge of the scent-column. "A block over, heading this way."

"Alone?" asked Drax. Rocket nodded. "But he's excited and trying to hide it and she's getting herself _cold_, focused. They must have found the place." Rocket said.

On cue, Quill and Gamora appeared from an alleyway. Rocket _hissed_ and muttered "Idiot" under his breath. Drax could see why: Gamora hung back and hugged the walls, but Quill let himself get silhouetted clearly in the mouth of the alleyway, and then stepped out without even the most cursory look around.

"Find it?" Rocket asked.

"Yeah! I found the bar, three blocks over, edge of a slaughterhouse district I don't recall being there. Don't know if our contact is there, though, let's head over and check it out."

"Don't_ recall _being there? This is a city only you have been to before, to find a contact _you _recommended, in a bar you said you were _sure_ you could find, and you didn't notice a slaughterhouse district I've been smelling for the past fifteen blocks?" asked Rocket. He turned to Drax. "Can you _believe_ this guy?"

"Yes." Said, Drax, confused. "That all seems consistent with previously given information."

Rocket gave Drax an open-mouthed stare that many seemed to give him, and then rapidly changed the subject. Drax wondered if the open-mouthed stare was some sort of affectionate gesture. It was generally given to him after he pointed out something obvious that others seemed not to grasp. He suspected such behavior would endear him to others.

"Can't even smell a frickin' stockyard." Muttered Rocket, under his breath. "Nothing else _to_ smell over here." Rocket eyed an alleyway darkly. "With some exceptions." Drax looked at him quizzically as Rocket fell into step behind Quill and Gamora. Rocket caught his gaze. "Never you mind. Too late anyhow." He said.

Halfway to the bar a derelict from a doorway confronted them. "Please, I'm sick, just a few units…" Quill looked away, but very slyly _(Drax barely noticed, and he was watching)_ dropped the man a few coins. Gamora frowned and walked past. To Drax's surprise, Rocket stopped and _sniffed_ the man, something Drax was trying hard _not _to do, before declaring. "Sick? More than you know Buddy" and reaching into his pockets. The man begun to thank Rocket profusely, "Can you afford to see a doctor?" asked Rocket.

"Cash, I need cash, I'm sick."

"I'll take that as a no. And if I give you cash, you just spend in on Zydrate: the amount you're sweating _out's_ practically saleable. Ah, here ya go, bub." Said Rocket, dropping something into the man's lap. He started to thank Rocket, thinking it was money, and then his eyes widened and his jaw slackened, turning his face into a perfect bowling ball of surprise and he picked up the evil-little push-dagger Rocket had given him.

"Missing evidence in the Johansson case. Space station called _hard times_ over on the Kree border. You were trying to steal fuel from his transport and he came at you with that knife. There was a struggle and you stabbed him twice in the chest. You then panicked and tried to bandage him with a tablecloth, but he bled out. That last bit was never in the police report, so if you add that they'll take you in." Rocket looked the man over. "Prisons in this sector ain't too bad." He said, not unkindly. "Warm, less violence than on the streets, if you keep your head down, all the de-lousing gel you can eat, and _doctors._ You've live longer than you will out here." He sniffed the man again "A _lot_ longer." He added, turning away. Drax loitered a moment, and then followed. He wasn't sure what else to do.

Quill pulled up short in front of the bar, oblivious to the incident behind him. He frowned for a second as he considered it. A two-story building with big place-glass windows, a bar downstairs, a closed-off restaurant/night club above. Rocket Pulled out his glass, booted it up, and scanned the faces visible thought the window. "No J. Star'l'in. could be he's in one of the booths out of sight, could be he's not here. A few minor bounties, but no hard-cases. Nothing we can't handle. If the guy's not here we could even nab a few of them."

"That's not why we're here." Said Quill, frowning. Rocket shrugged. "You're the boss, boss. But we've gotta eat somehow. Way I figure it is if you're that captain, you've got to take personal responsibility for the welfare of your crew." He said, squinting at Quill through his Glass. "otherwise they'll start to fend for themselves." The glass _blooped_. "well waddaya know. Looks like Yondu opened that orb."

"How much more than before?" asked Quill, scanning the crown at the bar's door.

"Only around 20 g's. Either he's broke or he musta liked whatever he found in there." Quill snorted and smiled at that. "Is that extra twenty-thousand enough that I have to worry about you? Start sleeping with my eyes open?" Quill asked.

"Now I'm offended, Quill. _Hurt _I am: you _always_ need to worry about me, money or no." said Rocket, putting away the glass. "But an extra twenty? Prrrfff." Rocket waved his paws dismissively. "Compared to what you owe me on ship repairs that's nothing. Your _organs_ are worth more than his bounty."

"Only slightly." said Gamora. "The junk food and the amount he drinks probably knock of around five per cent." Drax nodded his agreement.

"You know, I don't even want to know how all three of you know that. My loyal crew: thank god we don't have room on-ship for a bath-tub and an ice-maker." He said, not taking his eyes of the bar, he stroked his chin thoughtfully and rested a hand on the butt of his favourite blaster. "Me and Gamora will go in, get a seat. Check the place out. Drax, Rocket, circle the place and make sure no-one's loitering around the back, then come in. Drax, join us at our table, Rocket, you attract way too much attention, so sit at the bar and keep an eye out for trouble while we look for the guy.

"Wait, what? Just sit around? I could have done _that_ back at the ship!"

"Keep an eye on who comes and goes, okay? And everyone, just… just act natural. We're just some regular spacers here to meet a guy in a bar, nothing more. Act exactly like you would in any other bar."

"Are you sure this is wise?" added Drax. "The place does not seem secure."

"It's a fishbowl." Agreed Rocket. " Look at the windows, it's a frickin' shooting gallery." He muttered Gamora also looked uneasy. Quill sighed.

"It's just a bar. We're going in for a quiet drink. What's the worst that could happen?" he asked.

**Awesome Mix Tape Part 2 track: **_Sweet- Ballroom blitz._


	3. Chapter 2 Part 2

Quill stepped past the cluster of older guys smoking by the entrance, pushed the doors to the bar open and stepped inside, scanning the room for trouble. The place was quite busy, but not packed. A gang of construction workers with the odd prison tattoo amongst them were loitering at one end of the bar, and a couple of teens too young to drink in a law-abiding establishment were on a small dance floor gyrating to a selection of old spacer classics played by a tone-deaf squid-headed band on the synth-bassoon. Other than that, most of the patrons kept to the booths that they had seen through the windows, (upholstered in unlovely wipe-clean maroon-vinyl) and kept to themselves.

"Check your blasters." Said a wall of scarred blue skin poured into a cheap suit. Quill looked the bouncer over quickly, before patting his blasters theatrically and saying "Check them, okay… yep, there still, there. Thanks for the heads up."

"Quill." said Gamora behind him, unbuckling her swords and placing them on the wire box-rack inside the door. The bouncer grunted at Quill, who smiled sweetly at him and unhooked his gunbelt and handed it over.

"Need to check the purse too." Snorted the bouncer. Quill glared, and handed the satchel over. Whilst he stood and watched the bouncer paw through his things with fingers like Bratwurst, Gamora went and got a booth with a good line of sight over most of the bar. Quill, who had clearly made a friend, got given a needlessly aggressive pat-down before he was permitted to join her. When he saw the booth, he nodded approvingly. You could see the whole bar pretty much. The only blind spot would be the main doors and the empty barstools near it, and given Rocket would probably sit there, he could cover the exits. A tired looking waitress in clothes ten-years too young came over and asked if they wanted anything.

"Beer." Said Quill without thinking, as Gamora ordered a club soda. Quill leaned in to the waitress. "We're here to meet a friend of ours, J. Star'l'in. Older guy about my height, bald, grey goatee?" the waitress looked at him blankly "What am I? Your social secretary?" she said, leaving to get the drinks.

Gamora looked to Quill. He shrugged. "Worth a try. Keep your eyes open but let's not start roaming around looking in booths until Drax and Rocket are here to cover our backs."

"Agreed." Said Gamora, fishing for her credit slip as the waitress came back. Quill put a hand on her arm to stop her. "No, no, allow me." He said, before dropping his voice and leaning in to whisper in her ear. "People are watching. They probably think you're my date, so let me pay for things and try to look like you're not on a stake-out at least every now and again. Now smile and laugh like I've just said something funny."

Gamora laughed, sweetly and musically before leaning in erotically and whispering back "If you ever tried to date me, and _presumed_ to take me somewhere like this, I'd shove your beer-bottle so far inside you you'd never walk normally again." She said, smiling and fluttering her eyes. "So let's find the guy and get out of here so I can have a long, hot shower and try to forget just how sticky this awful vinyl seating it." She said, as Drax entered the bar, spotted them and walked over. Quill was annoyed to see Rocket wasn't with him.

Drax walked over to the alcove that Gamora and Quill were sitting in, and sat down opposite them. He couldn't see the doors from here, but he could watch the seat near the door that Rocket had pointed to from outside and indicated he would occupy to act as look-out. It was a raised stool adjacent to the serving-surface, and Drax wondered if Rocket has chosen it for the extra height it would give him to perform his duties as look-out, or if he had chosen it for its proximity to alcohol. Unfortunately, someone else had walked over and seated themselves there. As he sat down, Gamora and Quill gave him curious looks, but just as Quill was about to speak a serving-wench arrived with liquid beverages.

"Would you like anything?" she asked. Drax considered this. "Revenge on my family's killers. Also a glass of water." The serving wench gave him the open-mouthed look before saying "I'll see what I can do." Quill briefly buried his head in his palm, possibly also searching for tiny idiots. Quill then leaned in to pay her for the drinks, and as he did Drax noticed that he dropped a filmy of J. Star'l'in on her tray along with the credit-slip. Either the beer had cost 80 units or there was some other unspoken transaction being carried out. The wench's eyes barely flickered, but she said "I'll see what I can do about that other order." with no hesitation. Quill then turned back to Drax.

"Well?" asked Quill, raising his hands open- palmed and leaning-in.

Drax considered this. "I am in good health, yes. Thank you for asking."

"Oh well that's great. _Well _as in_ where the hell is Rocket!_" Quill hissed.

"There is _no _need to take that angry tone with me!" said Drax, causing Quill to finch as people looked around at them "Given your instruction that I was to sit with you and he was not, Rocket though it would allay suspicion if we arrived at least one minute apart, a course of action that I_ very_ much agreed with!" he continued.

"Uh huh, because we're allaying suspicions now, sure enough!" Said Quill. Gamora put a hand on his arm. Quill sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "All we needed to do was come in, and sit down. Is that so hard?" he stood looking from Drax to Gamora with both hands on the corners of their table "Now everyone in the bar is looking at the table with the huge shouty tattooed man, and it'll take a train wreck to get their attention off us!"

"You're fucking kidding me? Two units to check in a gun of that size? Listen buddy, I wouldn't give two units for most of the other weapons on that rack, so if anything happens to my guns or some _slimeball _leaves their greasy fingerprints on the barrel of that I'm gonna make them _eat_ it!"

Drax got a very good view as Quill's facial expression froze, and congealed into dull horror. Seated opposite Quill, he could see what Quill couldn't as the muttering and _sotto voce _complaints about thug bouncers got louder, culminating in a cry of "Hey! Get outta my chair asshole!"

The man sitting in the lookout-stool disappeared with a _yerk,_ his drink half-way to his lips as the stool was violently pulled from under him. Drax couldn't see what was happening over Quill's shoulder, but there was the unmistakable _snick swish Tzzzt! yelp_ of someone taking a shock-prod directly to the spine, followed by the agonizingly drawn out keening screech of a bar-stool being dragged across a polished floor.

It went on for some time, and as it did Quill started biting his lip and staring at the floor, eyes, scrunched up tight, hands still on the table-corners. Gamora winced every time the sound spiked. After an eternity of waiting and a brief agony of despair, the top of the stool re-appeared and Rocket calmly climbed up, stood on the stool to see over the bar, and slammed his tiny clawed fist down and yelled. "What's it take to get some frickin' service in this place! Hey you, monkeyman! Smokestacks, straight up. And make it a double." The barman looked offended, but hooked his tail over the celling rails and swung off to get the drink none the less. The man Rocket had de-stooled stood up, waked up behind Rocket, raised his glass back to smash Rocket in the face with it, and then got a _look_ from Rocket, at which point he thought better of it, and left quietly. Rocket caught Drax's eye in the mirror behind the bar, and gave him a little grin.

Quill re-opened his eyes when, somehow, a fight didn't break out, and Gamora stared breathing again. "Well, you _did_ tell him to behave the way he would in any other bar." She said.

"Yeah, in hindsight I should have thought that through more. On the other hand, people have their train-wreck. Let's mingle." Said Quill, getting up. "Drax, watch our backs and keep an eye on Rocket, okay?" Drax nodded.

Quill and Gamora sauntered off, Quill desperately trying to look casual.

Quill didn't want it to be too obvious that they were searching for someone, and so sidled along to the restrooms, edging past people with an easy "Excuse me, pardon me, Woah! Didn't see ya there buddy, try truing off the adaptive camouflage!" and finding excuse to get in as many people's way as possible and so check them out and look in the booths. Within twenty seconds, he had knocked over the drink of a quiet, easy-going-looking individual who as it would turn out, was anything but. Not knowing this, Quill pressed on.

Gamora, wanting to check out the area around the dance floor, headed off to the gambling machines near it, and put a few units in. As the lights bleeped and whirled, she looked over the bar, assessing who was watching who, who looked armed, and who looked like they didn't need to be. She was an assassin and she was good at it. What she was not, however, was a gambler. If she was, she'd have spotted that the machine she went to had recently been heavily bet upon by a number of drunks, and was therefore at its highest odds of paying out. She would also have probably spotted the three heavies who had been watching it and have realised that she'd just cut in line between them and their prize.

Rocket sat at the bar, drinking his Smokestacks (or his second, or his third. Who was counting?) and not watching the door. People noticed watching, and he knew damn well that he didn't need to stare. His sense of smell and hearing were sufficiently good that actually looking on lookout was kind of redundant, he figured, and besides, it's not like this was the most dangerous job he had ever been on. Unfortunately, his hearing was sufficiently good that without even trying, he got an earful of what the construction crew at the end of the bar were saying.

"-flattened. The CBD is a total write off. That kree ship just _wrecked_ the city. That's why I'm heading there. There'll be work for years just putting everything back how it was, let alone the other options for civic regeneration and all that crap."

"Yeah, kinnda a pity the whole city didn't get wrecked. Way I heard it, it was a close run thing. Some kree loon with a doomsday device hits the planet, nova get caught sleeping and it's up to some costumed nut-nuts to save the day."

"I heard pirates. The Ravengers?"

"Nah, it's the underwear-on-the outside freaks this time. Some loon vigilante, calls himself star-prince." That made Rocket smile.

The largest and most prison-tattooed of the gang, who looked like the very first proto-scaffolder to crawl out of the primordial ooze and build condo's for lungfish, snorted and turned to the other workers, with the tone of a father educating a young brood, and spake thus:

"You're both talking out of your assholes. I heard how it went down from a cousin o' mine. This star-lord guy _was_ a Ravenger, but he couldn't hack it and quit. Spends a few months trying to make it alone as a 'legendary outlaw' " said the scaffolder, making the world's biggest inverted commas in the air "and then suddenly he's out of prison and working for Nova. Some bitch from inside Ronan's organisation too. They get a walk from prison, get out of the Kyln, the day before everyone else there conveniently dies in a 'terrorist attack'. Then suddenly, they're working for Nova, full pardon, and they save Xandar from an attack Nova swears would destroy the entire planet, but won't say how? Come on!" he said, leading back and swigging his beer. "It's an inside job: a cover up!"

The rest of the construction crew started booing, good naturedly, and throwing GeGeNuts. "Conspiracy nut!" one yelled. Another mocked "Let me guess, you're gonna say it wasn't a ship-crash at all, it was a cruise missile! You got that theory from _spare units_, and that didn't make any sense anyway!"

"Hey!" said the Scaffolder. "It's a Nova trick to empower the military-industrial complex. Scare everyone, have some lone freaks save the day and appeal for a bigger budget because no-one wants to have to rely on some random 'hero' to save them. Otherwise explain how they got out of the Kyln? No-one escapes the Kyln. "

"Except maybe…. Rocket!" said one of the others, jokingly, making a weird little devil-horns gesture above his head with his fingers. Most of the crew began to throw GeGeNuts and jeer him instead, but some of the more jail-bird members of the group looked thoughtful.

On the other side of the bar, Quill saw someone with his back turned to him and seized the opportunity to push on, unawares of the tragedy pooling behind him as the laid back looking man desperately tried to dry-off his crotch. He grabbed the guy facing away from him by the shoulder and said "Hey! Jim I- Oh sorry." He smiled sheepishly "Sorry buddy, I thought you were someone else. Looking for a friend of mine Jim, Jim Star'l'in. You seen him about?"

"Piss off, bounty hunter." Said the guy, shrugging him off. Quill's sheepish smile did not so much fade and freeze up. In hindsight, turning up at a bar visibly armed, with someone like Drax in tow, and asking a ton of questions, didn't seem like that good an idea. Of course people would mistake them for bounty hunters, and if they were friends of J. Star'l'in the last thing they would do was help them find him. In fact they were probably lucky if someone didn't call him and warn him off. Still, too late now, so Quill smiled disarmingly and pressed on. "Whoa there buddy!" he said, spreading his arms wide, and knocking another drink over, onto the laid-back looking guy as he desperately towelled himself with a disposable napkin. "You've got the wrong idea, I'm just an-"

"An old friend of the family? Concerned for them and trying to find them to let them know that a friend has died? That maybe they left them something in their will, and that a share of that cash might be forthcoming to anyone who helps you find them?" said the guy. "Do you think I was born yesterday? Tell me something that hasn't come from the same script every bounty-hunter uses to try and get people to tell you where their mark is?" the Guy looked at Quill and raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

Quill opened and closed his mouth a few times, before settling on "I don't suppose you'd believe a story about some magic glowing stones of doom and defeating Ronan the accuser in a dance-off?"

The eyebrow raised some more. "Thought not." Said Quill. "How'd you make me? You a bounty-hunter?" it would explain how he had not only seen through, but known the sorts of introductions that got people to part with other-peoples location: more people would lead you to someone if they thought you were helping not hunting your target.

"Me?" The guy laughed "No, but _he_ is." He said, pointing. Quill's face scrunched in horrified confusion as he turned to see who he was pointing at. As he turned, he bumped right into a previously laid-back looking man who had been approaching him rapidly from behind intent on violence, who had just enough time to say "Yondu sends his regards- _Ahhh!_" before they collided and both slipped on the spilled drink and went down in a heap.

Gamora spotted this and decided to meld back into the shadows, walk around to behind the guy and try and flank him, when she felt a displacement in the airt behind her and turned, suddenly.

"Hey! Where are you going so fast, Sweetness?" asked a skinny, evil-eyed Xandarian in a tone that didn't even contain the slightest trace of genuine lust. "You think you can come over and play _my_ machine just before a pay out and then waltz off so fast?" he asked, shaking his head sadly and Gamora became aware of the two far larger goons that had materialised to either side. There was a _snick _ as a switchbade appeared in the Xandarian's hand "Ahhh, and you so pretty, sweetness. Such a shame…"

"Oh come on!" said one of the construction workers at the bar. "Rocket? He's an urban legend. A boogie man custody-sergeants use to scare their kids. It's a fairy story! No-one escapes twenty-odd prisons in, what? Five years? Six? It's make believe, all that crap about breaking out of Longheath with just chewing-gum and a toothpick, it's kids' stuff, wish-fulfilment."

"An inch of wire. What good's a toothpick? You'd need something frickin' _conductive_ to short the door controls." Said a voice. No one paid it any attention.

One of the older, more tattooed members of the group leaned in. "I wouldn't be so dismissive, if I were you. I was in a cell once, which a guy, who's previous cell mate _saw _the Rocket. Broke out of a maximum security wing in ten hours. Hacked the computer system using the outgoing phone lines, called his 'lawer', but it was a rent-a-cloud computer, used the prison commissary account to buy the computing power to hack a bank account for money to buy _more_ computing power and so on until he could brute-force the jail's computer core. Apparently," he said leaning in conspiratorially "he's six foot tall, with eyes like fire and a shock of flaming red hair."

"Really? I heard he's two foot tall and scaly, like a lizard."

"I heard a Robot: he was once _part_ of a Rocket."

"I heard he's a seven foot tall tree, with some sort of weird pet follows him around everywhere." The scaffolder snorted at that.

"I heard the tree bit too, but way I head it they were a couple of queers. He's some sorrta mutant. Some fucking failed experiment that crawled outta a perti dish and didn't have the good sense to _die_. Tho' way I heard, _one_ of 'em's dead: heard they were on Xandar when the trouble happened, and they were walking around like a couple of dopes, when the kree ship fell outta the sky and smashed his fucking tree to splinters and the little fag actually started _crying_ over his retarded tree-"

_scrinch._

The construction workers burst out laughing at this. Scaffold, however, thought he heard something and looked left. A few seats away, a small furry alien with a long black and white tail was looking calmly at its clever little hands and, without any sign of distress at all, pulling the shattered pieces of a glass out of its palm. It did not look up as it spoke.

"So you think that's funny, do you?"

"Huh?"

"I happened to lose a good buddy of mine on Xandar, Pal. I was _asking_ you if you think that what happened on Xandar was somehow _funny_." The small alien said.

The scaffolder and his buddies stared, open mouthed. And there was a single, perfect moment of balance where it looked like things could go one way-

"Shit me! A talking cat!"

- or they could go the other. And did.

The construction crew begun roaring with laughter, Gamora Kicked the knife-wielding Xandarian in the crotch, and as Quill and the bounty hunter struggled up, a stunner dropped to the deck and clattered off onto the dance-floor.

So it was probably just as well that Drax was there to save the day.

He did not do it like you'd expect.

Spines were _not_ pulled out.

Sitting in the corner drinking his water, Drax observed Rocket acting as look out by the doors, Quill working the room and Gamora watching the crowd from the gambling machines, and reasoned that if he was to contribute to the team, then he should do his part to help find Mr Star'l'in. Looking around the bar, he spotted a pay-coms in the far corner. Calling Ronan and asking him to come had worked, he reasoned. Sort of. He could just look up J Star'l'in in the communications directory and call him. He would not even have to necessarily convince him to come: there was a possibility that he was already in this place and he would just have to see who in the crowd answered his communicator.

Satisfied with that line of reasoning, Drax got up and begun to walk across the bar. As his path would take him across Gamora's location, he would tell her his intent.

The Xandarian Gamora had kicked reeled back in a small private world of hurt, and stumbled. As he did he put out his hand and lent of a wall to steady himself. The wall then spoke.

"Gamora. I am going to try and locate J. Star'l'in's name on the pay-com directory. If we can locate him quickly we can progress, and I will be closer to avenging my family's killers and you will be closer murdering your step-father." Drax looked down. The Xandarian leaning on him and wheezing had a switchblade in its hand. He took it and held it up to the light. It had a ceramic blade, so fine you could almost see through it. "This is a _very_ nice knife." He said, his face lighting up as he studied it. "I like it I'm keeping it." He decided, as he walked off, still holding it to the light and admiring it.

Gamora and the Xandarian and his two goons both watched in stunned silence as he walked across the dance-floor towards the pay-com. The Xandarian looked at her and she crossed her arms and rubbed her cheek, trying to hide her face with embarrassment.

"He… he does that some times. I'm not sure he's quite normal in the head." She said.

"Right." said the Xandarian. They both stood there in an embarrassed silence for a bit. One of the two goons whistled under his breath before muttering "awkward."

"Yeah, yeah." Said the other goon. "Look, lady, I think we got off on the wrong foot. We just want to get to that gaming-machine because it's about to pay out, and if you let us there'll be no more trouble."

"What? Oh, sure." Said Gamora, stepping aside.

"Oh Come on!" said the knife-wielding Xandarian. "She kicked me in the balls and we're just going to let her get away with it? Get her!"

"Shut up Randal." Said one of the goons. "Mom's gonna be pissed that you lost granddad's knife."

"Oh but that's so unfair!" he wailed. Gamora decided she needed a drink after all.

Quill and the bounty hunter observed the stunner skid away across the floor, looked at each other for a moment, and them both tried to leap for it. Quill got further, but then the bounty-hunter grabbed Quill by his trailing long-coat and Quill lost balance and started slipping again on the wet floor, so he turned and punched the bounty hunter in the gut, hard, as a result of which they _both_ fell over again as he dragged Quill down. The guy then punched Quill in the face and somehow managed to leaver himself upright on the back swing, but then Quill fired up his rocket-boosters and shot away as the backwash from the boost knocked the guy over. They both spun on the floor, half-upright, half crouched, as the guy reached into his coat for a shoulder-holster and Quill drew for the guns on his hips-

And they both stood there for a moment, with their hands in strange and unnatural positions as they realised that their guns were sharing adjacent spaces in the wire rack next to the door of the bar, a good thirty yards away. The bouncer watched with mild amusement.

"Ah. Kinda forgot that doorman took my guns." Said Quill.

"Yeah, me too. And the guy was really _rude_." Said the bounty hunter. "he gave me this, like, totally unnecessary pat-down, and then he insisted on searching my Satchel."

"I know! He called mine a purse." Said Quill, glad to have finally found someone who had also known the unjust persecution of sensible man-bag owners.

"Well." Said the bounty hunter "Yours kind of does look like a purse."

There was a moment of heavy silence before Quill through a bottle at him and they both surged for the stun-gun again. Unfortunately, the spilled drinks and the punches they had exchanged turned this from a mad dash across the room into a frantic ducks-on-iced-pond drunks-first-time-on-skates race and they lent on each other and pulled at each other and slipped and slid and bambi'd along for about ninety seconds and eleven feet until Drax walked past, examining a switchblade that looked comically tiny in his huge hands with the air of a lepidopterist who has found a rare butterfly parked on his finger.

"Drax! A little Help here buddy. _Drax!_" yelped Quill, as he started to slip for the third time in four seconds.

Drax stopped and one-handed picked Quill up by the front of his shirt and deposited him on dryer ground, to his relief. To his horror, he then did the same for the bounty hunter, and then gave him his stunner back off the floor, clearly completely oblivious to the fact that they had just been fighting.

"Thanks." The guy muttered, before getting a good look at who had just helped him. The color drained from his face like the syrup form a snow-cone.

"Drax the destroyer." He whispered in a hoarse voice. Drax looked away from the knife for a second at this and nodded. He then turned to Quill. "I'm going to try and summon J. Star'l'in with the pay-com. Gamora has gone to the bar."

"Gamora. Gamora the assassin who worked for Ronan, and killed the president of Argo One with a fork." Said the bounty hunter. There was hardly any syrup left at all now.

"Yes." Said Drax. "And also she worked for Thanos and killed many others." He turned back to Quill. "I think she will sit with Rocket."

"Rocket." said the hunter, flatly. "Touch-my-booty-and-I'll-kill-you, we're-still-finding-bits-of-the-last-guy, doesn't-play-well-with-other-bounty-hunters Rocket. And you_ know_ these people?"

"Yeah." Said Quill, Putting his hands on his hips and flaring his coat behind him dramatically. "I'm their captain. The name" he said, relishing the look of fear on the bounty -hunter's face. "is _starlord._"

The bounty hunter's face went blank for a moment, and then he looked down and pulled a filmy, the type of cheap one you could get printed out free at a public data-terminal, and then looked back. "Never heard of you. Shit, sorry about that there: I've got a bounty out on a Peter Quill, and the pic on the filmy looks a bit like you. Except, you know, better looking. And taller." He patted Quill on the shoulder. "Honest mistake, starlord: for a second there I thought you were someone important." He said, as he walked off.

"If you were looking for a bounty I believe Rocket has no designs on the construction workers by the bar." Said Drax, unaware of just how untrue that statement was getting with each passing second. He then walked off to the pay-com, still examining the knife; the handle was hornwood inland with mother of pearl and lapis, and was truly lovely.

Quill stood there for a long moment as he considered rocket-jump-punching the hunter in the back of the head, but Jim Star'l'in could arrive any moment, and a brawl would probably scare him off. He decided to get some ice at the bar for his head, and maybe a stiff drink to go with it.

Drax patiently entered the queue of the pay com, behind the serving-wench he had seen earlier, and then realises that he didn't have any money, and unlike before there was no operator to threaten into making the call for him. So he decided to head back to the bar. Rocket would have money, and may well lend him some. If he was in a good mood.

Rocket sat up straight, rolled his shoulders back and forth to loosen them up, cracked his knuckles, tilted his head from side to side, and then swivelled on his bar stool. He regarded the laughing drunks dispassionately for a moment, before throwing his head back and laughing in his best totally-real laugh. After a second or so the constriction crew realised they were being mocked by a yard of fur and stopped.

"What are you laughing at?" Scaffold said. Rocket theatrically wiped a tear from his eye, and poured himself another drink before replying.

"Ahahaha, no it's kinda funny really, when you think about it. All that shit that went down on Xandar, all those con's killed at the kyln and what have you, all those poor SOB's dead: I wonder how many of them were sitting around joking about Ronan right before he came outta nowhere and killed 'em. Just, sitin' about, laughing like a bunch of bug-fugly idoits eating urinal-cake GeGeNuts as they drink their last two brain-cells to death and never, _ever_ knowing just how close the guy they're mocking is, or just how little time they got left before he'll _destroy_ them." said Rocket, looking them over each in turn and smiling with all the warmth and compassion of a fox eating shit of a barbed-wire fence.

There was an expectant pause as the construction crew tried to work that out.

"Who are _you _calling Ugly, you little rat!" yelled one, getting up and rushing Rocket. Emphasis was on tried.

Rocket chucked his drink on the floor almost casually as the man charged forwards, and griped his bar-stool with his other paw and swivelled to the right. As the man slipped on the drink and went down, Rocket kicked him with both feet as he swivelled, guiding the man's fall neatly sideways into the bar-top. There was a _crack_ as the man's chin hit the linoleum and he went down like a sack of shit as Rocket calmly swivelled back to face them, still grinning.

Scaffold leapt up and grabbed a heavy-bottomed beer bottle. He stood flat-footed, and Rocket watched where he held his weight. _Probably dumb enough to fall for the same trick as the last one _ Rocket thought.

"Bad call: You're gonna be in a world of pain, rat." He leered. _Trip him, put shot glass on bar where his **eye **__will land…_

"Yeah, well. It's a small world. Gonna get smaller for some, pal." Said Rocket, as he casually weighed his glass in one paw and rested the other on the Velcro at the base of his tail. _Sock-prod for the second, lump the bar and grab the scattergun I can smell. Third, forth. Improvise for the fifth…_

Scaffolder screwed up his face in confusion, trying to work out why something so frickin' small would want to take on him. "Just who the _hell_ do you think you are?"

Rocket grinned, happy that the guy's exclamation on the word hell had covered the _riiiip_ of Velcro unsticking.

"Buddy, if you haven't worked that out by now, you deserve every ounce of what you're about to get." He said, tightening his grip on the shock prod and getting ready to leap up and-

"Rocket, I need to borrow two units for the pay-com." Said Drax. Lumbering up and halting just off Rocket's right shoulder. He had an ornate and very _sharp _looking switchblade in his hands, Rocket instantly noticed, because noticing things like that was why he was still getting in to bar fights and not a scarf.

"_Not. **Now.**_" Rocket hissed, and then his brain caught up. "Wait, what?"

"Wait, _rocket?_" said Scaffolder, with a cocktail of horror and disappointment.

"Two units. For the Pay com." Said Drax.

"Why? You calling for some frickin' take out? I'm in a bar fight here." he said waving his hand about. _snick _"I've got a shock prod and everything!"

"Shit me!"

"I was going to dial up J. Star'l'in on the pay-com directory and see if there was a contact number listed for him." Said Drax, as the bulk of the construction crew begun to edge their way down the bar away from Scaffolder and Rocket, who stared into space for a moment and just said. "Huh." Rocket leaned back, and started scratching the small of his back with the shock-probe. "That might just work."

"Wait, sorry." Said Scaffolder. "I'm confused. You're Rocket? The Rocket."

"Yeah. Sure. The legendary bounty-hunter and breakout artist is in a bar scratching his ass with a shock probe. What little clue was it gave me away? The bit where he said my name?" said Rocket sarcastically.

"You." Rocket said, pointing dramatically with the shock probe, which sparked impressively. "Are an asshole." He concluded. "You are, however, the _luckiest _ asshole in the galaxy, because Drax the frickin' Destroyer came up behind you with a knife when he did, and asked me for change, as opposed to say, a second latter when you might have attacked me, in which case if he'd seen that he'd be feeding your _d'asted_ vertebrae into the pay-com coin slot. You are also the luckiest asshole in the galaxy because my Drax the Buzzkill's ruined my fighting mood and because my boss, Peter Starlord Quill, told me it was a waste of time to haul in half of you sorry sacks for your _monumentally_ petty bounties. Mister parking tickets." he said gesturing to one. "Mister skipped bail on a drugs misdemeanour, or you, mister indecent exposure. And as for _you._" He said, pointing to the prison-tattooed scaffolder. "If you _are _gonna fall for and elope with the guy who ploughed you in prison then at least pay child-maintenance to your ex, you goddamn deadbeat! Prison tats! Honestly, why don't you make it _easier _for me to look up your ID's! Get outta here and leave me alone! You are honestly the _saddest _bunch of bounties I've seen in my entire flickin' life, and I've met Peter Quill!"

"What's this about me?" said Quill, wincing as he sat down at a barstool the other side of Scaffolder and grabbed a lump of ice from a bucket and applied to a cut on his eyebrow. Rocket frowned. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Could ask the same, seeing as you're threatening half the bar with a shock probe. Bounty-hunter punched me on the dance-floor."

"Why, you try to chat him up? Compare satchels?"

"Ummm, actually yeah."

"Bounty-hunter?" asked Scaffolder "Where?"

"Probably that guy." Said Rocket, pointing with the probe. The Scaffolder turned to see who he was pointing at and so he caught a barbed stunner-round in the eye. Quill and Rocket watched for a moment as his writhing and screaming competed with the crackle and buzz of the stunner round, before turning back to the bar.

"Pretty good shot." Said Quill, as the bounty hunter screamed at the other construction workers, and martialled the ones with outstanding bounties into a rough line. The bouncer eventually slouched over, and after the merest glance and the guy's bail-bond recovery license grabbed the scaffolder by one very damp trouser leg and started dragging him out of the door.

"Meh. I've seen better." Said Rocket putting his shock-probe down on the bar, as the other bounties were marched out, hands on heads and hearts in mouths. He poured himself another drink, and passed the bottle to Quill. "Drax thinks we should just look up Star'l'in's contact details and call him. Could work."

"Yeah because I'd never think of something that incredibly _simple_." Said Quill, glaring as he reached over top take the bottle "I gave the barmaid Star'l'in's pic and I wrote on the back asking her to find him or his contact number when we first came into the bar! She's already looking up for me." He said, holding the ice to his head and razing the bottle to his lips and Gamora came over and took the seat next to them. Drax sat between Quill and Rocket.

"I'm not just a pretty face, you know." Said Quill, taking a pull from the bottle. His pretty face turned a deep shade of beetroot and his cheeks budged, but he managed to hold the drink in and just cough violently rather than spraying the bar, to Rockets disappointment.

"_Jesus!_ What is this stuff?"

"Smokestacks old frontier spacer's whiskey. Best drink in the house."

"Was the house _on fire?_ It tastes like a burnt tire!"

"It's an acquired taste." admitted Rocket. "Acquired by mercenary's, mostly. You can use this stuff to de-grease grav-tanks turret bearings, light fires, make MRE bombs, scare of blood-flies." He took a pull of his drink. "and it don't kill you of make you blind. Had worse in prison. _Made_ worse in prison. Turns out the dead leaves Groot sheds in autumn ferment pretty well if you hide it behind a heating coil-"

"Because I really needed to know that." said Gamora, ordering a vodka-quinine. Whilst the simian barman was there, Quill leaned over.

"Hi, could I get some ice with this? And a splash of soda? And a completely different drink? Thank you."

"So J. Star'l'in is not here?" said Drax, ordering another glass of water. Quill looked to Gamora, who shrugged.

"Well, I didn't see him in here, and Gamora didn't. We'll see if the waitress gets back with a contact number, and if not I'll have to call Dey see if he's got any other leads. May as well sit around and have a drink." He said, raising a beer to his lips.

They sat in silence for a moment and watched their reflections in the mirror behind the bar.

"We suck at this, don't we?" said Quill.

"Yes." Said Drax.

"Yep." Said Rocket.

"Oh _so_ much." Said Gamora. "But we'll get better. We just need more practice at things other than wanton destruction. We're good at that." She looked around. "And drinking in really awful bars: this must be worse than that bar in Knowhere."

"Nah, the bar at Knowere had better beer." Said Quill, helping himself to GeGeNuts.

"It had unusual cruelty based gambling." Said Drax.

"It had a clientele who washed their hands between takin' a piss and sticking their fingers in the complementary nuts." Said Rocket. Quill spat nuts across the bar.

"You're mad. This place is so sleazy." Said Gamora.

"I dunno, it's not all that bad." said Quill turning to look at Gomorra. At times she was almost approachable "For example-"

"Hey, wanna buy some deathsticks?" asked a sleazy looking horned alien sliding up between Quill and Gamora. Quill stared at him.

"Um let me think about it. _No!"_

"You sure, finest Quality, fell of the back of a Badoon transporter. Fair price."

"Oh yeah, this place has real class Quill." Said Gamora. "Please, take me _more_ places with knife-fights and runty drug-dealers".

Quill glanced up at Gamora, and then glared at the dealer. "You don't want to sell me any dethsticks." He said in a firm voice.

"I don't want to sell you any deathsticks?" the alien repeated.

"You want to go home and re-think your life." Intoned Quill, waving his hand in a strange manner.

The alien considered this. "No, I think I still want to sell, you some death sticks. Bulk purchase and I can get you good discount."

"Piss off! How dumb do you think I look?" asked Quill. Rocket snorted into his drink and muttered something under his breath that Quill made a mental note to get him back for later. "I'm not buying them, they cause cancer!"

"No they don't." said Rocket. "You're thinking of cigarettes." He said, before muttering something that sounded suspiciously like ' frickin' hick hummie.' Into his drink

"Huh?" said Quill.

"He's right." Said Gamora. "Aneurisms, narcolepsy, unexplained rectal bleeding, sudden and unexpected multiple organ failure, but they're not carcinogenic."

"They don't cause cancer?" asked Quill.

"No, but still the health risks involved are-"

"I'll take twenty." Said Quill, getting out his credit-slip. Gamora frowned.

"Didn't you hear what I just said?"

"Oh, yeah, I did. But people look so damn _cool _smoking these things, and besides, it'll probably never happen to me."

Gamora, Drax and Rocket all frowned down the bar at Quill and he popped open the packet and lit up. The chorus of "you're an idiot" from the lot of them echoed and mingled unpleasantly, but Quill paid them no mind as he took that first smooth, refreshing pull, and promptly started to gag and cough uncontrollably as he struggled to stay on his barstool. The others watched unimpressed.

"You know" Started Rocket. "Back where I-" he paused. "back when I was-" he stopped. That wouldn't do either. He stared into the middle distance moodily and drummed his fingers on the bar as he tried to find the correct words. When he spoke again, it was in the tone of someone weighing everything very carefully.

"This may come as a surprise to you all, but I got a look inside a behavioural laboratory once."

"No shit Sherlock." Managed Quill, through the waves of tears and racking coughs. He didn't want to look week in front of the crew, so took another pull. It was agony.

"Anyhoo. They had a monkey in there. Part of an addiction study I think." Said Rocket. "They had the poor thing smoking around a thousand deathsticks a day."

"That's horrible" said Gamora.

"Tell me about it." Said Rocket, taking a pull from his drink and staring into space. "Little bastard never _once_ offered me a smoke." Rocket turned to the dealer. "Gimme two hundred."

"Rocket!"

"What? I ain't gonna smoke 'em! I value my skin far too much. I'm gonna wait until this idiot is hooked and sell them to him at four times the price."

Gamora remonstrations were interrupted when the bouncer slouched over to them, took a look at Drax's knife, Rockets shock-probe and the hand Gamora had around Quill's throat and said, with the instinct of all true bouncers.

"You can't smoke that in here pal, outside!"

"What?! But look at the" Quill said, pointing to Gamora's hand "and the" he gestured to the weapons sitting openly on the bar in front of Rocket and Drax. The bouncer folder his armed and grinned, and Quill, who could occasionally spot a doomed cause before it was too late, sighed, got up, and slumped off to the front door, puffing moodily on his deathstick. As he stood up, Gamora grabbed the dealer by one of his tiny freakish trumpet ears and started to drag him in the direction of the back door where she gave him a short but very to the point talk on the value of civic responsibility and how if she ever saw him again she'd pull out his spleen.

Drax was left alone with Rocket, who he noticed was still taking repeated deep pulls on his drink that made him scowl and mutter darkly. Well, made him scowl and mutter darkly with a greater frequency than usual.

"Are you unwell?"

"Nah. Just still steaming about those dumb bounties tried to mess with me. That sortta thing really gets my goat, yanno?"

"I was unaware you kept livestock."

"I mean, it's a bar. You get all kinds'a people in bars. You don't know who you might meet, so why start something with someone you don't know? He could be the biggest baddest SOB in the quadrant and you'd never know until it was too late."

"You did take the time to get to know me before provoking me to drunken violence on knowhere."

"Exactly! And prison tats, I mean really!" Rocket stared gloomily at his reflection for a moment, before addressing it.

"Do you have any idea what I wouldn't give to have what they have? To be normal lookin' and inconspicuous and blend with a crowd, and how do they treat it? They get themselves cut so that every dope in the galaxy knows that they're ex-cons. It's stupid. I mean, you… you were never gonna win a blending in contests and I'm guessing that the, yanno, the scars have something to do with your dead family and what not." Rocket, looked to Drax, who held his gaze coolly for a moment before nodding. "and I get it, that's fair enough" said Rocket. "But prison tats I ask you. Stupid." He hunkered down and poured a drink, somewhat unsteadily. "I ain't never getting a tat."

"You have a tattoo."

Rocket stopped, and put the bottle down carefully. "Come again?"

"You have a tattoo." Repeated Drax. "You have a bar-code and a serial number tattooed inside your left ear."

Pause.

"Yes. Yes I Do." Said Rocket, painfully carefully. "Well spotted, Drax. Not many people ever notice that. Now, could you please do me a favour."

"That would depend on the nature of the favour, but in all likelihood yes."

"Nice. So, Drax, could you please keep that kinda comment to yourself in future and never mention that subject again, otherwise I'll have to kill you in your sleep." Said Rocket, extremely carefully.

Drax considered this for a moment and nodded.

Outside the bar, Quill stood and smoked his deathstick gloomily. It was starting to look like this entire trip had been a waste of time. One of the gaggle of older guys standing around outside the bar and drinking beer as they smoked noticed him holding the ice to his face and snorted.

"Been in the wars, son?"

"Oh yeah, got stuck in a three-day running battle leading up to the crash on Xandar, so though I'd relax tonight with a nice little fist-fight with a bounty-hunter."

Most of the old men snorted with laughter, but the one who had spoken to him looked curious, or as curious as you could look standing half-hidden in deep shadow.

"You were on Xandar during the attack? Mind if I ask you a few questions about it."

"Hey, go buy a news filmy: I'm having a bad day, okay?" Said Quill, as the door opened behind him. The man looked offended and turned to go. As he did, Quill noticed the waitress form earlier come out of the door towards him. "Oh what now? Was I smoking too close to the door or something?"

"No." she said. "You were looking for Jim Star'l'in?" she asked.

"Yeah?" she pointed over Quill's shoulder at the retreating back of the older guy he had just offended.

"Looks like you found him." She said.

Jim Star'l'in was walking away from the bar cursing the younger generations when a voice behind him called out "Mr Star'l'in? Mr Star'l'in? Excuse me, pardon me…. Hey Old Dude!"

Jim Star'l'in turned. The rude young man from the bar was running up behind him.

"What do you want?" he asked.

The man ran up to him panting slightly, as people were wont to do after their first deathstick, but pulled up to him and offered his hand.

"Hey. I think we got off on the wrong foot there. Name's Starlord, legendary outlaw. Maybe you've heard of me?"

This man is clearly an idiot, Star'l'in thought.

"Okay, so you've never heard of me. I also go by the name of Peter Quill. I'm an old friend of Rhomann Dey, and me and my friends flew a long way out here to meet you."

"Uh-huh? Look kid, Dey's a good Guy, firm but fair. Chased me away from enough crime scenes back on Xandar, but always friendly and ready to talk afterwards, would understand that a reporter's just doing his job as much as a corpsman, would buy you a drink if he saw you in a bar. And if you were on Xandar when that Kree ship crashed then maybe you've got interesting things to say. But you are one monstrously rude kid, so give me one good reason why I should help you out."

Quill's face froze a second as he desperately tried to find a good reason.

"Dey says you're like a huge Thanos expert, spent years trying to track down info in him?"

"I have some knowledge of him, yes." He said, making his entry in this years 'galaxy's cagiest remark' contest.

"How'd you like to meet one of his daughters?"

Star'l'in snorted. "Good answer. Now try one I'd actual believe."

Quill frowned. "No really, one of my crew is one of his daughters. Gamora."

"Okay, so you've done some research, looked up the name of one of his, but that still doesn't give me any reason to trust you: there might be people in the past I've reported on as having links to Thanos, and a lot of them took the inference badly. A lot of people have reason to want to do me harm. So why should I go back into that bar with you?"

Quill remembered he was talking to a journalist. "I'll pay for your drinks."

"Done." Said Star'l'in truing back to the bar. No true writer ever turns down free drinks.

Quill took him buy the arm as he walked him along. "You know, when we first got here and couldn't find you, it looked for a moment like some giant bar-brawl was going to break out, and I was worried that we might scare you off."

Star'l'in snorted. "It's okay, I don't scare easy. Besides, you only came here to talk to me, you say? What's the worst that could have happened?" he said, as Quill pushed open the door.

Drax had the Bouncer in a headlock. Gamora was trying to fight off three lascavarian thugs with a bar stool, and Rocket was standing on one of the tables, menacing a teenaged couple with a scatter gun he seemed to have got from somewhere. Star'l'in and Quill stood in the doorway and stared in utter horror, until Rocket spotted them and lowered the gun as if nothing was happening

"Oh Hey Quill, what's up?"

Things settled down (not without a lot of shouting) and Star'l'in looked quite amused as Quill stood and counted out units to the Waitress, who, as things would have it, was also the bar's owner.

"hundred and twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, I swear ma'am, this sort of thing never usually happens to us."

"Uh-Huh? You just count yourself lucky that Jim here was willing to vouch for you, and that I'm an old friend of corpsman Dey as well. If anyone else had pulled that sort of shit in my bar, I'd have Bruno here take them down to the stockyards and throw them in the slurry pits!"

"-Hundred and ninety, two hundred. And again, I cannot say how sorry I am about all this." He glanced to the Bouncer "and again, Bruno was it? I have to apologize for the language Rocket was using there: I'm sure your mother is actually really nice."

"I'm his mother." Squawked the waitress.

"Really?" asked Quill. The waitress was more than a head shorter than him, and a different color to Bruno. Both Star'l'in and the waitress shrugged.

"Interspecies offspring are more common out here than you would think." Said Star'l'in.

"Tell me about it." Muttered Quill, handing over the last of the cash and taking Star'l'in's drink and carrying it over to the booth for him. Star'l'in hadn't run away screaming, and had vouched for them to the bar owner the second he'd seen Gamora with his own eyes. He agreed to help them, so long as he got to interview Gamora first. The team were all sitting there already, and had the decency to look ashamed (expect for Rocket, who Quill was stating to suspect never did) and had all offered to pay their share of the damages (except for Rocket, who said he'd consider taking it off the interest Quill owed him for ship repairs).

Star'l'in sat himself opposite to Gamora, and for the next half hour of so asked her questions more of less non-stop. He wrote down her replies in a little pocket-book filled with filmy scraps, something that seemed odd at first until you realized that no-one could hack an old-fashioned note book. Mostly his questions were on Thanos's previous role in assassinations and attacks, and a few questions on Nebula and Gamora's other 'sisters'. He asked a few questions into Gamora's personal past early on, and having got glacially cold replies, soon stopped. The then, briefly, asked them to explain how they'd met Gamora and what had happened on Xandar, and to his horror Quill found the other three members of the team turning to him. Him! So he told his story, as best he could. Rocket chipped in occasionally, and Drax rarely, but Star'l'in seemed to be legitimately interested and was a good listener, so Quill told him pretty much everything, except what had happened after they had defeated Ronan. Nova prime Rael might be a reasonable person, but he was pretty sure she wasn't above arranging actual murder if you leaked the location of a highly classified super-weapon to the press. Around an hour and five drinks later, he seemed satisfied and put his book away.

"So, you actually touched an infinity stone?"

"Yeah. I don't recommend it as a health-regime to anyone, and unlike Ronan I wasn't building it into any weapon and holding it aloft and shouting 'I have the power', but yeah. I did."

"And the side effects…"

"Unpleasant. Hallucinations, severe pain, dissolving from the inside out. Death. The usual. I was pretty much a goner until my friends helped me, like I said."

"And you held it?" asked Star'l'in "I mean the power. The four of you actually held the power, and controlled it?"

"Five." Said Rocket. "Five of us. I was holding onto Groot at the time: the one bit of Groot that started growing back afterwards."

"Wow. Just wow." Said Star'l'in, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Do you have any idea how long people have been trying to harness Infinity stones unsuccessfully?"

"Meh, I think I saw space Liberatchie give a talk on that, yeah." Said Quill. "But what I'd like to know is, what the hell is an Infinity stone, and why does Thanos want them?"

Star'l'in leaned in close and gestured for them to do the same, he glanced around the bar and lowered his voice before he would speak, but then continued.

"They say that there are six infinity stones, as old as time or even older. That they were involved in the creation of the universe, and might be involved in its destruction. One stone, the space stone, the Tesseract, we know was hidden on Terra long ago, we believe by the Asgardians. The terran's tried to make use of it however, and we think it drew Thanos interest and lead him to organize the recent Chitauri invasion of terra-"

"Wait, what? Earth got invaded? When, how. What happened?" asked Quill, shocked. He stared into space for a moment. "Did they have tripods?"

"Why would they have tripods?" asked Gamora.

"I dunno, why would they invade earth! My life went very 'flight of the navigator' about twenty seven years ago and I haven't exactly been keeping up with current affairs back home since!"

"The invasion failed, Terra is fine, as I understand it, and no, there were no tripods. Flying doom whales, yes, but no tripods." Said Star'l'in. "You want to hear this or not?"

"I'm not sure any more!" said Quill. Star'l'in, who had clearly been getting this sorted in his mind for some time, however, pressed on. "It looks like Thanos has had possession of at least two of the stone at various points, the tesseract, that his Agent Loki captured during the invasion of earth, and another stone, no-one is sure which, possibly the mind-stone, which he gave to Loki to lead the invasion. So as far as we can guess, although he wants all six stones, he's not going to be idle with the ones he has, he's going to use them or give them to others to use for him until he's got all six in his control. As far as we can tell the mind-stone was lost in the invasion of terra, and the tesseract taken by the Asgardians. We believe they also found the Aether, the reality stone on terra, and gave it to the collector, Taneleer Tivan, for safekeeping, so tracking down the stones before Thanos does will be easy with his help, or a complete nightmare without it."

"Oh. Goody." Said Rocket. "And the stone we found?"

"I found it!" said Quill. Rocket glared.

"the stone our glorious captain found and then hid in his purse." He said.

"It's not a purse!"

"Based on your description, probably the Power stone. That leaves the Time stone and the Soul stone somewhere out there unaccounted for, with Thanos after all six."

"Why?" asked Quill. "Do you get a limited edition collectors watch if you send in all six box-tops?"

"No. you get the universe." said Star'l'in, simply. "As far as I can work out, if you get all six, you're effectively what the gods would call god."

That killed the mood around the table.

Although not as much as what Star'l'in said next.

"Oh crap." He said, and tried to hide under the table. Instantly the team looked around. A dozen very tough looking kree had just walked in through the back door of the bar.

"Friends of yours?" Asked Quill.

"Friends of Ronan's. I might have done a very negative press article on then a few months back attacking kree hard-line nationalism and suggesting it's being backed by Thanos, and they've been after me ever since."

Quill looked to his weapons, on the rack, by the door. "Ookay, were gonna get you to my ship, asap."

"No! My research, years of intel on Thanos! I can't go without it. It's in a motel two blocks from here. The hungry heart. Grab your weapons and meet me there in ten, I'll get Bruno to delay these guys to give me some time." Quill looked to him, and nodded. He didn't like the idea of leaving him alone, but these kree didn't know they were on Star'l'in's side, and if they never learnt that until Quill had them on the wrong end of his pistol, all the better. Rocket was already armed and out the door, checking for more. He gave the all clear through the big glass windows. Gamora and Drax followed Quill out into the street. Jim Star'l'in tried to look casual, as he called the waitress over and whispered in her ear.

Out on the street, Quill started to buckle on his gun-belts slowly and carefully, trying to clear his mind. A tangle with kree hard-nats was the last thing he wanted, but even so two to go. Soul and time. Don't like the sound of that. Not one bit.

Drax and Gamora walked slowly, like he did, trying to keep it casual, but Rocket was practically leaping from foot to foot with impatience.

"Come on! We want to make it to this motel before those goons do so we can ambush them! " said Rocket, as behind him a groundcar rolled up slowly and wound down its windows. "The last thing we want is to get surprised-"

The only thing the passenger of the groundcar got wrong was to accidentally hit the control for both windows, not just the near-side one. The resultant through-breeze of air flowing in one window and out the other was the only reason Rocket smelt the burnt-tin taint of the plasma-coil warming up a fraction of a second before the drive-by was in the correct position. It wasn't the gunman's first time running a drive by and in his defence, against almost anyone else it probably wouldn't have made any difference.

As it was, Rocket dropped his weight hard to his left mid-sentence, spun on the ball of his foot, flung his tail out wide for balance as he dropped-then-pulled-in his gun, letting him pirouette with balletic grace, levelled, and drew a bead on the gunman before he'd even thumbed off the safety of his plasma carbine. Rocket saw, analysed, adjusted for the car's movement, and fired before the passenger even realised he'd been made.

Unfortunately for Rocket, the driver of the groundcar chose that exact moment to sneeze, and applied the slightest touch of brakes by mistake, so the shot that would have decapitated the gunman if the car had kept moving at the same speed only cosmetically troubled him and instead passed through the open near window, an ear, the open far window, and then in order a mailbox, a child's bicycle, a shinbone, an expensive pet lizard and a parked ambulance's engine block some two hundred yards distant, were it came to an abrupt halt; which was just as well for the owner of the shinbone because it meant there were a lot of paramedics on hand.

However, the shock of this brush with death and the loss of a perfectly good ear was such that the gunman spazzed up his first shot and jerked his arm up reflexively, so the wild, inaccurate plasma-carbine fire that would have otherwise went well low of Rocket instead went mostly high of Rocket and the first shot glanced off the shoulder of Rocket's insulted body glove knocking him sideways into Quill's shins and downing them both in a cloud of obscenity, vaporized graphene, and burnt-fur-stink.

Unthinking, Quill grabbed Drax's leg and pulled him down into cover behind a parked vehicle.

Gamora had leapt behind a parking bollard a few yards away and three more cars of gunmen rolled up, and suddenly it was too noisy to think. Plasma rounds were everywhere, the very air felt cooked, and as molten metal and glass rained down, Quill turned behind him just in time to see the kree hard-nats grab Star'l'in and start dragging him up the stars to the abandoned night-club on the top of the bar, as another group of armed goons stormed the bar from the back and started shooting from inside the bar out at Quill. He realized with a jolt that he was outnumbered, outgunned, pinned with no real cover, and if he wanted to save his best lead on Thanos, he was going to have to fight his way into the bar full of murderers.

A bar that due to all the poorly aimed plasma rounds, was now on fire.

**Awesome Mix tape 2 track;** _The Tramps: Disco Inferno._


	4. Chapter 2 Part 3

**Chapter two part three (flaming shots)**

The bar burned.

Customers poured out of the back door like ants from a hive. The plasma rounds must have hit something in the roof, insulation foam, pipe cladding, something cheap and polymer based to go by the stench of burnt plastic. At least two off the awful vinyl seating bays on the ground floor had gone up as well, adding their own fragrance to the rapidly growing fug. It was strong: it would have to be to be noticeable over the hot-metal smell of the plasma rounds and the stink of scorched fur and cooked meat coming from Rocket's shoulder. He was all right though. Well, Quill could feel him squirming in his hand and his curses would scorch the air if the plasma rounds weren't doing it already, so Quill had to guess he was okay. He had dragged him half way to the Concrete parking bollards before he even realised he was holding him. A plasma round from inside the bar splashed off the sidewalk in front of him and showered him with sparks. He fired off a few rounds back in the general direction of the shooter and rolled into the shadow of the bollards with Gamora. He didn't remember grabbing his pistol either. As he made that last desperate push for what little cover there was he was very aware that if he hadn't grabbed Rocket he'd have two guns to shoot back with. Stupid noble instincts.

"We don't leave a man behind." He said, more or less to himself. "Racoon behind. Mammal. Whatever." Quill slammed his back up against a parking bollard to get the maximum cover from the goons from the ground-cars. Gamora looked at him as if he'd gone mad from her position by the next bollard, and Rocket kicked him in the hand.

"Let go of my tail, numb-nuts!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe I'll check it's okay with you first next time I need to haul your stripy ass into cover!"

"Better cover than that storm-drain over there? The one I could fit down and was a _whole goddam yard _from me before you dragged me all the way over here? Oh, and my shoulder's fine. Thanks for asking!" yelled Rocket, unlimbering his glass from his back and readying his gun. "It's not like I used that _arm_ much!" As his gun whirred and clicked its way to full size, Quill glanced to the left. There was indeed an open culvert close to where Rocket had been shot. Given the proximity to a cheap bar it probably saw more vomit and second hand beer than storm-water, but sooner that that a plasma bolt to the face, and Rocket could probably have fit inside with no trouble. _And then terrorised everyone in town in range of a culvert like Pennywise the freaking clown, rather than being stuck here with me and Gamora. _He though glumly.

"Okay! My bad!" yelled Quill, drawing his second pistol. A Kree goon popped up inside the bar and loosed a couple of shots through the big glass windows, before Rocket and Quill's return fire sent him diving into a seating alcove for cover.

"We've got no cover here!" yelled Gamora, flinching as molten glass rained down. "The bollards will shield us from the Kree by the groundcars, but we're _yards _from the Kree in the bar!"

"With nothing between us and them but a wold of plate glass!" yelled Rocket. "Frickin'. _Fishbowl."_

"How many adversaries do we face?" yelled Drax. All three of them looked to their right. Somehow he'd been able to squeeze under a parked groundcar, and was lying there with both knives out and, apparently, no concern whatsoever. He might as well have been back on the _Milano_ for all the worry he showed.

"Let me check." Said Quill. He popped a head around the bollard and pulled it back a moment later. He then stood up to see into the bar, and sat down again very, very quickly as a dozen rounds from both directions cooked the air where he had been. Drax and the others looked to him.

"No idea, went too fast, forgot to count. Fifty?"

"There nine by the groundcars." Said Rocket. He watched a reflection in one of the few unbroken ground floor bits of bar window, angled the reflective edge of his info glass carefully like a mirror, and then shot over his shoulder without exposing an inch of himself. "Make that eight." He said. "Can't tell about the bar: they're indoors and downwind of us besides."

"I make thirteen." Said Gamora.

"Same." Said Drax.

Quill winced. "Well, unlucky for some. Does anyone see Star'l'in?"

"Upstairs!" yelled Gamora. "Last I saw six Kree had him and were dragging him to the top floor."

"Why?" yelled Quill. "If they wanted him dead, they could have shot him and walked away. If they wanted him alive, why not drag him out the back door? It's not like we could stop them right now!"

"Why don't you go in and ask them yourself?" asked Rocket. Quill started. Rocket had booted up his glass and was running a kitchen-timer app.

"I'm sorry are we boring you! We're pinned down by a bunch or armed Kree, and you've got a cooking app out?" Rocket glared at Quill.

"Might as well seein' as you got my shoulder flash-fired! Those are old Kree military M1 plasma carbines. Solid, reliable, and strictly semi-auto."

"they seem to be producing a prodigious amount of fire power for a semi-automatic weapons!" said Drax. Rocket grinned.

"You know what blooming is? It's the tendency of a plasma round to loose cohesion and spread out over a wide area before it hits its target. Plenty o' ways to solve it, but kree weapons use a containment coil linked to a regulator, prevents blooming, but limits rate of fire. Old merc's trick, overclock the Blooming-regulator, turns the carbine form a long-rage semi to a short-range full auto."

"And?" asked Quill. Rocket held up the glass, showing a one-minute countdown set to go.

"Overheats the regulator! The weapon has to eject it, pops right out of the top of the gun to air-cool! Can't be fired again for at least-"

"-one minute." Said Quill, grinning. "We stay alive long enough for that to happen, we can take those guys behind the ground cars!"

"What about those guys in the bar?" asked Gamora. Quill shrugged.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Said Quill

"Will crossing that bridge put us in advantageous terrain when we fight the Kree?". Said Drax. The team gave him that open mouthed expression again. Quill turned back to Rocket.

"How long until they overheat?" Rocket shrugged, hosing down the booths in the bar to keep the heads of the shooters inside down. "The more rounds they fire, the faster it will be. Give them something to shoot at, and it'll happen fast."

Quill looked at Rocket for a second, and then decided to act before he could think about how _monumentally_ stupid an idea this was.

He pulled out his holo-imager, still programed with that historical data from the wrecked museum on Morag, aimed it at one of the surviving windows of the bar, and activated it.

Instantly the volume of fire form the thugs increased at the holo reflected off the glass and they suddenly saw a whole bunch of people spring into existence in front of them. (_Quill briefly wondered if they recognised it as the hiding-place of an infinity stone, or would have cared if they did )_It was a cheap trick, and one that would only last a second, but it bought Quill time for phase two of his very stupid plan.

Whilst they were all shooting at ghosts millennia dead, Quill activated his helmet, booted up his HUD, and fired off his Rocket-boosters. He heard Gamora shout his name in shock, and he thought he heard Rocket hiss in frustration, but there was no time for a clever plan and besides, if he was honest, planning was never his thing.

For a second, he honestly believed that he would make it to the dumpster on the corner without getting hit.

Then there was a_ clonk_ and a fierily stab of pain through his right foot, and the asphalt of the street came up and kissed him. He managed to roll away most of the damage the fall should have given him, and keep hold of his guns. He tried to right himself from his sprawl, only to see a tattooed Kree thug less than fifty yards away aim a plasma carbine right between his eyes, grin, and pull the trigger.

There was a toaster-popping noise, and the carbine's tortured blooming-regulator popped out the top in order to get some desperate and much-needed air cooling. _Klu-chunk!_ The gunman moved his eyes sideways for just an instant to look, and then Rocket moved his eyes sideways half a block for him with a well-placed round. There was the gentle patter of falling teeth and Rocket, Quill and Gamora hunkered down and waited for the shooting to slacken and give them some time to think.

Quill crawled sideways along the street to the dumpster, trying to get to better cover. As he did, he noticed Rocket lean out from behind his bollard and give the Kree a gesture Quill didn't recognise, but that the Kree evidently did. A torrent of fire hit the bollard Rocket was behind, and Quill could see him flinch as the concrete started to glow red-hot and sag, and they just as it looked like they'd melt the bollard into slag, there was a whole chorus of pop-tart noises, and Mr Chief the friendly cooking app declared. "One minuet. Fifty nine, fifty eight,"

Quill slid out from behind the dumpster at floor level, propped himself up on his elbows, and started blazing away at the heat-signature his HUD showed behind one of the ground-cars. Gamora leaned out from behind her bollard and downed a Kree gunman with a throwing-knife she appropriated from gods-knows-where, and Drax pulled the hub-cap off the ground-car he was hiding behind and Frisbee'd it into the face off a particularly suppressed looking Kree who went down hard. _ Who does he think he is, Captain America?_ Thought Quill.

"Fifty five- fifty four,"

But Rocket had the most fire-power, and used it. He switched his ammo-feed to his less-lethal electro-bolas , and put a couple of shots into each of the three ground-cars. There was a momentary pause, followed by the crackle of electricity that still made Quill wince with memory of Rocket shooting him with the damn things. All three groundcars were suddenly outlined in violent blue sparks, and three of the five surviving Kree who had been incautions enough to be touching the metal of the vehicles they were hiding behind got a twenty-thousand volt how-do-you-do by way of a reward. The other two leapt back in shock. Quill dropped one with a stunner round from his pistol, and Rocket slotted the other with an old-fashioned kinetic slug. There was a momentary pause, and then all hell broke loose _again_ as the Kree inside the bar started shooting out, and two of the windows from the upper floor blew out and two gunmen appeared there and started shooting almost vertically down at them. There was an undignified scrabble as Drax, Gamora and Quill ran to hide behind the _other_ side of their car, bollard and dumpster, and Rocket rolled into the gutter behind the curb, and both sides started trading pot-shots again. The timer hadn't even reached fifty when someone shot it.

Quill gestured for Gamora, who had the least cover, to get behind the dumpster with him. She nodded, and after a shared glace he and Rocket laid down covering fire enough to buy time for her to leap over. Thanos build his daughters fast, moments later she too was hiding behind a filthy dumpster in a puddle of grey-green goo.

"You okay?" shouted Quill over the sound of combat. Gamora lifted up a hand from the puddle she was sitting in and watched quite calmly as the liquid _squolched_ and slithered its way off her fingers.

"I'm going to kill them all for this." She said, quite calmly.

"That may be unwise. You should at least leave one for me to interrogate." Said Drax next to them. Quill and Gamora looked at him. Rather than leave cover of the vehicle to make his way over to the dumpster, he had ripped the door off the groundcar, taken off the handbrake, and rolled his cover over to them.

"What? An interrogation of these Kree nationalist may prove informative. Also, they irritate me: viscously beating them would help relive a great deal of the frustration I feel pinned down by their shooting."

"Well, were' not going to be able to get out from here unless we can find a way to get into that bar, stop the guys on the top floor shooting at us, or both." Said Gamora. Quill nodded. "You and Drax are wasted in a firefight, you need to close with these guys and take them on up-close." Said Quill. He glanced above the dumpster for a moment, and a plasma-round vaporised an inch of metal too close to his head for comfort. "We need to take out those two on the top floor: if we can, we can rush the bar and get in close with them." they all shared a long look, then glanced left.

Rocket was doing his best road-kill impression, lying in the gutter like an abandoned slinky and flattening himself to a worrying palliates-accident degree. His breathing was so slow it was hard to see. He looked dead, with only an eye and a shoulder showing over the curb, which was the whole point. He fired his gun in short, controlled bursts, resting it on the kerbstone like a parapet. As he and the gun were horizontal, the muzzle climb sent the bullets out in neat horizontal arcs at a convenient ankle height through the booths of the bar, and every now and again he'd be rewarded with a short sharp shower of metacarpals and the sound of a large body hitting the deck and screaming, which he quickly silenced with precise double-taps. Quill briefly hoped all the civilians other than Star'l'in had made it out, until he remembered what dicks they were to him.

"Rocket! _Rocket!_" Quill yelled. "Hey, Bottle-tail! Get over here!"

"Yeah? Kinda busy here star-lord."

"No shit Ranger Rick, get your ass over here, I've got a plan!"

"_You _have a plan? Why am I not feeling confident." Muttered Rocket as he begun to wriggle on his back though they gutter towards their dumpster, trading the odd round with the Kree inside. "Idiot's got a frickin' plan. Bet this one involves me getting shot or beat up just like all the others. Bet Gamora and Drax and the humanoid crewmembers stay intact… oh man, that's nasty. When's the last time someone cleaned this gutter? Yeah, What?" asked Rocket as he made it too the other three behind cover and shook himself off, much to their displeasure. Quill, who had lowered his helmet to talk, took the time to wipe the splatter-pattern of gutter-grime off his face before asking.

"Can you take out those two guys on the upper floor?"

Rocket looked at him as if he'd just starting drinking paint, then looked up, to the upper floor of the bar, and then looked back.

"You're kidding, right? there're twenty feet above us, and less than thirty away, with partial cover, and if they step back from the window even a pace, we can't see them at all over the window still but they can still see the top of our dumpster: if we stick our heads out, It'll be a shooting gallery. We climb the wall, and they shoot us down from a nice safe position six feet behind the window where we can't see them from the ground. We're not in proper defilade here! All we have is this stupid dumpster and it ain't enough. We're exposed, and if they pull back into the top floor, we can't see them and all of a sudden they've basically got reverse slope defence!" Rocket looked to Quill. "You didn't understand a word of that, did you!"

"No! You saying that you can't hit them? 'Cause I really need for you to get up there and murder Cyril Sneer and Mr Knox for me right now! "

"Not from here! Not with a direct-fire weapon! And we step out of here, were dead. Maybe if I had my grenades, a mortar, something that works indirectly that we could lob through the windows…" Rocket looked up at the windows, then looked around the alleyway, searching for ideas. Then at the gun in his paws, and at the window again. He had his idea.

"Awww _Crap._" He said. "We have _one_ indirect-fire weapon: me."

"Huh?" asked Quill.

Rocket muttered a response.

"Hey, speak up, I can't here you over the shooting!"

"I said, you need to throw me!"

"…_what?_" said Quill, Gamora and Drax at once, and as much as he was really, _really,_ hating what he was about to suggest, Rocket had to admit it was almost worth it for the look on their stupid bald faces.

"You have to throw me: if we pop up anywhere on the ground, they'll kill us. We pop our heads up through that window, they'll kill us. We need something we can throw into the room that can roll past the window out of their killing ground and take them out from floor-level. And I really, really wish it was a grenade but we don't got none so it's gonna have to be me, isn't it?"

"That's the most insane thing you've said for almost a week." Said Drax. "I admire that level of wanton insanity.

"Well I don't" said Quill. Gamora Nodded in agreement before adding. "Rocket, you'll die. " Rocket snarled, as a plasma round from the floor above punched thought the dumpster and landed six inches off his foot. "Yeah, because staying here is a naturally tenable recipe for a long frickin' life! Trust me, I don't wanna do this, but we've got at least six Kree goons on that top floor, with our best lead, and a maybe bunch of other civilians in there, and no other plan, so you, Starlord, you reckon you can make that jump with your fancy jet-boots? "

Quill looked at his damaged right boot. With all the adrenaline he had hardly noticed the glancing plasma-burn. He flexed his foot, it moved okay, and the diagnostic on his boosters said they'd still work.

"I guess." He said.

Rocket nodded. "Give me a second to cause carnage, and when you hear it, you follow me through, guns blazing." He turned to Drax. "Hey big guy, you recon you could throw me though that window?" he said, pointing to one of the pairs that the two Kree goons had smashed. "Left window, I want to shoot down the length of the building and get Enfilade fire on the ugly SOB's!" Drax looked, and nodded. "You sure?" Asked Rocket. "You mess this up and I'm in for a world of hurt."

"I will not miss. I was a player on my schools scrumball team in my youth." He said.

"Yeah? Well I didn't take you for a cheerleader somehow." Said Rocket.

"Yeah, defiantly glee cub." said Quill, before truing to the rest. "Gamora: once Drax throws Rocket and I make the jump, you and Drax hit the ground floor hard, try and head them off at the stairs. You get any civilians left out the back door, Drax, you get up the stairs and take out any hostiles up there. Rocket, you sure about this?"

Rocket looked up. When you're three foot nothing, twenty feet seems an awful long way.

"Not as sure as I was five seconds ago. This goes wrong, you guys gotta look after Groot for me. Treat him right. Oh, and help yourself to the fruit-roll-up I'm fermenting behind the fridge, just don't blame me if you go blind. Deal?" he asked, checking his gun out of force of habit.

"Deal." Said Quill, activating his helmet again and readying his pistols. Gamora weighted her sword and tensed to sprint over to the bar. Rocket took a deep breath and told Drax. "You screw this up, I'm gonna come back and haunt you."

"I was not aware you believed in an afterlife."

"I don't, but for you I'd make an exception. Just get me thought the right window, and not too hard, okay?"

"Do not worry." Said Drax, hefting Rocket by the front of his armoured onesie "I was a player on my school scrumball team." He declared, before throwing Rocket through the window.

The window to the right of the one he was supposed to. The window that was still very much glazed.

Gamora, Drax and Quill watched this backwards defenestration somewhat surprised as shattered pieces of glass rained down over their alleyway. From inside the bar, came a Kree shout of surprise, a long, drawn out groan of pain, a louder Kree shout of surprise, and a lot of swearing mixed in with flashing gunfire that culminated in one of the other windows getting shredded by plasma rounds a fraction of a second before a small furry bullet hurled itself though and crash-landed in the dumpster with enough force to rock it back on its wheels. Horrified, Quill and Gamora turned to Drax.

"I thought you said you were a player on your school's scrumball, team!" said Quill. Drax had the good grace to look embarrassed for a moment before his baseline anger re-asserted itself.

"I was a defensive player: tackling other players if they got the ball was my role. I seldom made long passes."

"So… _kind_ of you to mention that _before_." Said the dumpster. Rocket rose up like some Golgothan devil, fire reflecting in his eyes and his teeth barred in an expression of pure murder that the rotting pizza slice stuck between his ears did little to detract from. He pushed himself upright with his gun, before levelling it at Drax. "Perhaps you'd like to mention that before we try this again." He said, dripping sarcasm and week-old spray on cheese.

Drax hesitated for a moment and then shrugged. "If you think it will help. I was a defensive player: tackling other players if they got the ball was my role." He said, grabbing Rocket by the chest just as Rocket remembered that Drax didn't do sarcasm. "I seldom made long passes." Said Drax, throwing Rocket again.

This time, his aim was true, and no sooner than he saw Rocket pass through the window, Quill fired up his boosters and sailed through into a strobeing, smoke filled vision of hell; but with disco lights, and sculpted velour seating. _Awful Kitsch: I've come home_ thought Quill, a true child of the 80's. He hit a glass-topped table, which unlike Rocket he was heavy enough to crush, and rolled, arms flailing and pistols firing wildly, behind an elegant chromed bar just as a volley of plasma rounds impacted into the mirror behind the bar. Either the plasma rounds hit a bottle of something dangerously strong, or the heat from the burning roof (which was abominable, even though his leathers) had boiled off the ethanol. Either way, all the liquor bottles started to cook-off one by one like firecrackers and shower him with shrapnel and a flaming cocktail of… well… cocktail. But one not even Rocket would want to drink. Probably

As he frantically tried to leaver himself up without shredding his hands on the shards littering the floor, he realised there was a shadow looming over him. Most people would have looked up to see who it was: Quill just shot them in the legs; Rocket wasn't tall enough to loom, and he didn't think Star'l'in would be particularly spritely post-kidnap. Just in case, he had his pistols on stun.

As it turns out, Kree don't stun easily. There was a bellow as the Kree took the shot to the knees and fell, but on his way down he punched Quill in the head. The helmet took a lot of the blow, and Quill punched him back. He had a pretty good punch, he recorded, and his pistols wrap-around hand guards added weight and solidity. The knee, however, must have had 40 pounds on him, and despite the hit to the jaw levered himself up to his knees and begun slugging Quill repeatedly in the head. Quill pulled himself up and begun hitting him back. After twelve painful and dizzying rounds of rock-em-sock-em-robot, Quill remembered that pistols also work as ranged weapons and shot the guy four times in the chest.

Quill stood up, and another Kree was there. Quill has just enough time to push the plasma carbine away from his chest, before the guy hit him under the chin with the butt. Quill went backwards into the shelves of bursting bottles behind the bar, and fell hard. The Kree leaned over the bar with the gun to finish him as Quill hand closed on a miraculously unbroken bottle and threw it. Smokestack's Old Spacers Whiskey smashed the guy's nose and filled his eyes before the contents caught with a dull _woof_ and he went down screaming. Quill vaulted the bar to finish him off, only to land on other table and smash it under him, cutting his thigh. After a smoky and confused moment of pain, Quill found himself on the floor grappling another hostile in the wreckage, and realised that the jolt of landing on the table had set off his Walkman, and even with it around his neck, heard as it started to play.

**Awesome mix tape, Part two;** _Nick Lowel: I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass_

"Oh thanks a lot Mom!" yelled Quill, grabbing a shard of the shattered table top and stabbing his assailant in the shoulder. He had no idea where his right-hand blaster had gone. He cut his hand on the shard, but the Kree roared and rolled off him. Confused and punch drunk, Quill lay in the wreckage of the table, fumbling at his Walkman controls. If seemed very, very important to turn off this particular song, although Quill could not have said why. Dimly, he saw a large bald person pull a shard of glass out of his shoulder and come towards him with it like a knife. _He's Blue. I'm going to get shanked by Papa Smurf. _ He thought, and giggled, before reality re-asserted itself.

"Oh Shit!" said Quill, struggling to raise his left-hand blaster. _Slow, too slow…_ the Kree leered and he grabbed Quill's left arm, blaster hanging uselessly, and raised the glimmering glass knife up to plunge deep into Quill's unprotected heart-

There was a series of soft popping noises, barely noticeable over the snap, crackle and pop of the fire, and a half dozen Quarter-sized holes appeared in the Kree's bare chest and sprayed Quill with blue blood. It tasted different to how blood should. Quill knew lots of alien species had copper in their blood instead of iron, but he had never wanted to taste the difference.

The Kree looked down at his chest, surprised, and then looked to his right. Rocket leapt up from his hiding place onto the top of the bar and there was a loud pop and the Kree's jaw and a good chunk of his throat disintegrated. He fell over sideways, and Rocket leapt down onto the ruins of the table next to Quill, snarling and sparing the body with bullets for good measure.

"Idiot!" he yelled, gabbing Quill's earphones and tugging at them with naked contempt. "It's a firefight dummy! Let yourself get distracted and you won't get a chance to live to regret it. You gonna fight, fight, don't let your mind get caught up in anything else- hey!" yelled Rocket: as he was lecturing Quill a shape in the smoke solidified into A Kree hard-nat who grabbed Rocket's gun by the muzzle. Rocket tried to pull the gun back, shocked, but the Kree pulled harder. Rocket didn't let go, so he just got picked up with the gun, hanging off the handle, legs wiggling uselessly as the Kree screamed and swung Rocket and the gun into to the wall by the bar, hard. Rocket was caught between the unyielding concrete and the butt of his own gun as it slammed into his ribs with a sickening _scrunch_. Rocket dropped grimacing in silent agony, but landed agilely on three paws, the forth clutching his chest. The Kree swing the gun around with military precision, planted the butt in his shoulder, aimed at Rocket, and pulled the trigger. There was a momentary pause and then a _blip_ as the palm-print system locked the gun down and gave the Kree a shock that made him drop it. Still grimacing and dripping blood form his mouth, Rocket stood on the bar top on three paws balancing with his tail, but now the forth paw held the shock-prod, extended behind him like a samurai sword.

"All right big guy, you wanna dance?" growled Rocket, and then looked up, fire shining in his eyes as he prepared to leap forth and-

The Kree grabbed Rocket and picked him up by the head, yelled in a mix of rage and genuine fear, because he'd never had to fight a talking Rat before and it was weirding him out, and then drop-kicked Rocket out of the nearest window, his boot connecting squarely with Rocket's crotch before he sailed out through the glass. The police siren that Quill had been hearing for several moments without really registering got a lot louder briefly, and then there was a screech of breaks, a dull thud that could be something small and furry getting hit by a bumper, and then the now familiar sound of Rocket landing in a dumpster at speed. From behind him, Quill heard the sound of Kree laugher, Jim Star'l'in yelp in pain, and the high-pitched whine of a plasma weapon charging.

Quill started to think that they did not have the situation entirely under control.

As soon as Quill Rocket-jumped through the window, Drax and Gamora rushed the ground floor. Drax noticed Gamora kept low and moved fast well. She was clearly practiced at this. Drax, however, never had the same luck keeping low. He was too big a target to truly benefit from such strategies, and he found it slowed him down too much. So he just _ran._ Without the fire from the upper story, and with most of the Kree in the bar hiding behind the seating for fear of Rocket's bullets, he made it to the front door before the shooting started, by which time it was too late. He didn't want to stop to open the door, but it didn't look that solid, so he didn't. He just lifted a foot, and stepped off the curb with enough force to propel him foot first into the door to kick it.

Drax slammed into the safety glass of the door, hard, his arms spread at an uncomfortable angle and his cheek smushed up against the glass. He stepped back a pace, confused, as Gamora vaulted through one of the broken windows to a chorus of screams. He looked at the door with a renewed respect.

"This is an extremely well made structure." He remarked, before trying again. The door rattled, but did not open. He looked down. A small brass relief built into the handle said "Pull." He pulled, wondering who in their right mind built a door that opened out onto the street. A Kree with a sword-slash to the face spilt out onto the street, screaming and blubbering. Drax held the door for him and watched for a moment, before drawing one of his knives and rushing inside to join the fun.

A Gun-barrel poked out from the weapons rack by the door. An obvious hiding place, suitable for a fool or a coward. Drax said as much as he grabbed the gun and pulled it thought with enough force to shear off fingers if they didn't release quickly enough. He lobbed the gun away over his shoulder contemptuously: hitting one of the three blade- wielding Kree Gamora was duelling with in the head and giving her the opening to open him from Kree hip to Kree knee. He then jabbed both his knifes through the wire of the rack. The Kree behind yelped and leapt back, _as if stabbing you was my aim_ though Drax, setting his legs wide apart and lifting with his thighs.

Fighters often went on about upper body strength, people always forgot about lower body and core muscles. His face contorted with effort for a moment, but then the screws holding the rack to the floor failed, and he lifted the rack by his knives, roaring defiance at the Kree behind the rack, who screamed back. It reminded him of his wife and daughter's screams, and he remembered that there were Kree hard-nats: loyalists to the old empire, supporters of Ronan's cause if not actually his men. The Kree fumbled in his belt for another weapon. If he needed arms, Drax was happy to provide. He threw the rack, a wire wall of guns and blades and cudgels, slamming the Kree to the floor under it, before picking it up and slamming it again and again until there was a Kree-shaped impression in the metal. Only then did he recover his knives and turn to the bar. A civilian, one of the construction crew that the bounty-hunter hadn't taken, looked at him from under a table, terrified. "Out." said Drax, pointing to the door with his blade. The man fled.

Drax lifted up the bar-partition and walked along behind the bar. It gave him some cover, and he did not want to be surprised by anyone behind there. He stepped over the unconscious bouncer, a steaming plasma-crater in his shoulder, and the shivering serving-wench, cradling him and a scattergun both.

He then stepped out at the other end of the bar, close to the rear exit. He checked it was secure, and then begun walking back to the front of the bar in the centre of the room. A Kree with an over-heated rifle saw him from a seating booth, pulled out a knuckle-duster, and rushed him. The Kree yelled and planted a solid blow in his stomach. Drax looked at the man. He yelled loudly, dropped his weight and punched again. Drax slashed him across the face, taking care not to hit his eyes. He wanted to see how this hard-nat would respond. The hard-nat filched back, but to his credit came forwards again, punching him, this time coming for a kidney. Drax shifted to take the blow on a rib instead: painful, but not as serious. Drax slashed him across the face again. He turned and fled. _Disappointing_ though Drax, slashing the man across his bare shoulder and opening the blue muscle to scapula and rib. He then ducked and slashed low, his knife catching in the hard-nat's lower spine and abruptly silencing his screams. He stepped over the crippled man and charged to where Gamora duelled the final two: Rocket's shooting seemed to have killed the rest, with at least two bullet ridden corpses much in evidence.

Drax charged silently, not giving away his approach and although she must have seen, Gamora gave the men she was fighting no clue, for which Drax was grateful. He only roared a challenge as he was already committed, slashing at the back of a Kree's knees and cutting the ligaments. The Kree, armed with pistol and a short-cutlass like blade, screamed and fell, but had enough focus to aim the pistol at Gamora's face as he fell, she spun away, whirring her sword from low to high and gutting him like a clam, groin to throat, before administering a final blow to the side of his skull with a hollow _clock_ as the blade bit deep into bone.

The last surviving Kree steped away, dropping his blade and pulling out an apple-sized orb of delicate and exquisite evil and yelling "Back away! Back away! You know that this is, do you?" Drax frowned. A few days ago he would have ignored that and charged. But the man had asked him a question, it was only polite to rely. And thanks to Rocket, he knew the answer.

"A quantum grenade." Said Drax.

"Armed." Said Gamora, circulating with her sword held high in the head-parry position.

"Yeah, armed." Said the Kree. "Do you know what happens when one of there goes off? Partial matter transfer: you enter the quantum state where you can pass through solid matter, but you're still subject to gravity. You start falling thought the floor, but that's not all. Your clothes start falling through your body, your bones thought your flesh, your organs through the caul and bones meant to hold them in place, and then the effect wears off, and you're embedded in concrete with your kidneys where your balls should be and your brain hanging out your chin. Developed to take down Mobile infantry in powered armor, they boast about man and armour being one, these make it a fact that medics can't fix afterwards. I hear they have to mercy kill most of the victims, "he said, leering evilly at Gamora "that is, the ones that don't die of shock when they turn inside out with their heads hanging out of their cun-"

The barmaid fired her scattergun, both barrels, and blew the delicate circuitry of the grenade to pieces, along with most of the Kree's arm above the elbow. He had just enough time to behold the blue ruin of his hand and start screaming before Drax stabbed him through both lungs and Gamora put a perfectly executed Raddoppio through his throat.

Gamora and Drax looked to each other for a moment, and then became aware the police lights from outside as a police groundcar screeched to a halt, accompanied by a metallic banging and sudden yelp for some reason, a counterpoint to the sounds of fire and fighting from upstairs. Without a word, they both rushed upstairs.

Quill rolled of the table, groaning, and looked over his shoulder. Two Kree were standing at the far end of the burning bar, near the stairs. One had got Star'l'in in front of him, kneeling and with hands on head, a plasma carbine pressed to the back of his skull. The other sat casually in a sculpted velour both, a neural jack in his hand. Quill grew cold at the look of that. _ They were going to try and access his memories, and then kill him. They didn't need him alive for long so they didn't take him out the bar when they had the chance, but they didn't expect us to get involved._

"Hey hey, what do you think you're going to find in his mind? Let's put the jack down and talk."

"On your knees!" Yelled the Kree who had booted Rocket, picking up a plasma carbine. Quill looked down. The floor here was mostly broken glass. "Yeah, not gonna happen buddy." He said from behind his helmet. Apparently this was the wrong answer, and the Kree screamed "Your blaster, drop it, drop it now! Helmet down, want to see your face!" Quill sighed, annoyed. This guy was clearly a graduate of the same Kree school of public relations at Korath the pursuer. He retracted his helmet and dropped the blaster, however. He didn't want to get shot. "On your knees!" Mr personality repeated. Quill looked down. Broken glass, blood and spilled beer. Lovely.

"Oh man." he muttered, dropping to his knees carefully, trying not to cut himself. As he lowered himself to the ground, Quill caught sight of a random curve of metal, under a table half way between him and Star'l'in. A random piece he recognised. The handle of his other blaster. He looked away. It was a good five yards. Not far, but far enough if you were on your knees with a gun to your head.

"Who are you?" asked the Kree playing with the neural jack, almost casually. "Who are you that would so willingly die for this sad old man?"

Quill didn't answer, so the lounging Kree waved, almost causally to the one standing over Quill with the gun. He kicked Quill in the ribs, hard, and screamed. "Who are you!"

"Peter Jason Quill." He replied, grudgingly.

"Who?" said the Kree, in a way that suggested, to Quill's well trained ear, that they had almost been expecting a different name.

_No… it couldn't be. The news can't spread that fast._

"Although there is another name you might know me by…" said Quill, looking up directly at the Kree leader. "Starlord."

The Kree leader gaped, his eyes bulging, and the Kree with the gun to his head actually _gasped_ and that was too much for Quill to handle. He started laughing, he actual couldn't' help it. He started laughing, and actually punched the air with joy. "Finally. Do you have any idea how long I- whoa, sorry dude!" he said, to the Kree guarding him who mistook the punching the air for a sign of aggression and almost shot him in the head. "Sorry, it's just, I've been waiting for a while for the name to catch on, kinda glad to see it's getting some traction and-" he noticed at the confused look the Kree was giving him. "Never mind, forget it."

The lead Kree, the one with the neural jack, beckoned.

"Bring him. There is much about the locations of these infinity stones we could learn from him as well."

"Woah, woah, with a mind jack? Just ask me, I'll tell I mean: you're just gonna mind jack two people in a public place with the police outside, what's this, two heads are better than one? You'll never get away from here!"

"Bring him!" yelled the Kree leader. The guard standing over Quill booted him upright, and obligingly begun to walk him towards his spare blaster. Quill kept them talking, to distract them.

"Well, if you've heard of Starlord, surely you've heard of the team I roll with. A pretty bad bunch, just outside, If you don't fear the police, fair enough. The police don't pull out spines or shock-prod people in the eye. I'm just saying you ought to be afraid of my team-"

"We can handle your so-called Guardians of the Galaxy."

"Huh? _That_ name stuck? But we only used it like once." _shoot, I was holding out for 'Quill's Questers.' _ Thought Quill as he moved forwards, he became aware of something reflected in the broken glass. He smiled.

"Trust me. Even I can't handle the Guardians of the Galaxy, and I'm their captain. _Now!"_

Quill grabbed the Kree walking alongside him with the gun, activated his helmet, and gave him a fraction of a second bust of rocket-boots for good measure, just as Gamora and Drax stormed up the stair. He knocked him down, and with the speed from the lick of rocket-boot, surfed him along the floor of broken glass, grabbing his blaster as he went past it and rolling to a halt inches from the Kree with the Mind-jack as the Kree with the gun to Star'l'in's head turned to face Drax and Gamora and then really wished he hadn't as they both laid into him. The Kree leader rolled too, slipping out of his chair, and diving for the carbine his goon had dropped. He got a hold of it, snared defiance, and rolled on his back, gun facing up.

Gamora's Sword pricked him under the throat, almost gently. Drax loomed over her left shoulder, and then a third figure appeared, red eyes glowing sinisterly in a monstrous helmet, as Starlord leaned offer her right shoulder, and aimed a blaster square at his head.

"Put the gun down or there will be… trouble." Said the masked figure, the voice sounding sinisterly robotic though the helmet. The Kree dropped the Gun and raised his hands, and under his mask, Quill smiled. He popped the visor on the mask and leaned in.

"So, I think you handled that well. Don't you?"

They stood in the foyer of the bar once the fire department had finished hosing the place down with orange foam, and the local sheriff took statements. The wounded were laid out on the sidewalk, the dead a little way along from them, and the three relatively un-hurt Kree handcuffed on the floor of the bar, letting the ambulances do their thing before they called in the recovery wagon for prisoners. Two civilians had been killed by plasma rounds, and one wounded by a kinetic slug that could have only come from Rocket's gun, Bruno the bouncer had been stretchered off with a gaping crater where his left shoulder used to be, and a dozen people, Star'l'in amongst them, hauled off to hospital for smoke inhalation. So Quill was surprised that the Sherriff, when he got around to talking to them, didn't haul them all off to jail.

"You kidding me boy?" he said, in a thick drawl that reminded him of Yondu . "This week we've had five bar brawls, a lascavarian honor killing, a decapitation in a bank, six gunfights and a drunken Saurus race through the streets. Now I've got the bar's owner, the security holocaster footage, and about a dozen witnesses that say these guys turned up and fired on you without provocation, set the bar on fire, and then you went in to fight them and rescue this old guy and the two bar staff. Hell, I ain't got time for arresting the folk I wanna arrest. You want to get arrested boy?"

"No sir."

"Hell, then you just sign hear saying that you agree with the witnesses version of events and promise to come back and testify at trial if needs be. Should be in about a year, if that. These guys' lawyers could drag it out longer, you know how Kree get. You're hereby given a formal caution for reckless endangerment of your own lives and discharging energy weapons in a public place, but given our city's stand your ground laws, I release you on your own recognisance. Just don't do it again. Only person I need to talk to is whatever damn-fool let off that solid slug hit the bypasser in the leg."

"Yeah, that would be Rocket. You haven't seen him have you? Last I saw he was getting kicked out of a window." Started Quill

"Quill." yelled Gamora. Quill Turned.

Rocket limped into the bar, preceded by a smell no-one wanted to experience. He was grimacing each step he took, walking in a funny bow-legged waddle (or at least more so than usual) and dragging one foot slightly. He had the butt of his gun under one arm and was actually using it as a crutch to support his weight as he walked along. He was also covered in vegetable peelings, bits of old food wrappers, and general dumpster goodness.

"Hey, buddy, you okay?" asked Quill, genuinely concerned. He looked beat.

"Never. Better." He muttered, limping up. "One question. Just one question. Where is the son of a bitch who kicked me in the crotch?"

There was a moment where everyone just stared at Rocket, horrified with how beat up he was. Quill pointed to one of the handcuffed Kree. Rocket nodded, and limped over to him.

"Hi there!" he said, leaning in to give him a good look at his trash-covered fur and bared teeth, before leveling his gun, switching the ammo-feed to electro bolas, and shooting the guy in the groin. Quill and Gamora moved Quickly, leaping on Rocket and trying to pull the gun away from him, but even so, he got a good three or four shots on target, partly because even with clothes stinking of brunt plastic Quill didn't want to wrestle some that covered in filth.

"Come on! I just wanna shoot him in the crotch a couple of hundred times!"

"Rocket, no, let go of the, no put down the- Oww! Don't you dare bite me Rocket I'm your captain!"

"Listen to Quill Rocket, he's not worth it!" yelled Gamora. "Besides, that's not the guy who kicked you in the crotch."

"Huh?" said Rocket and Quill at once. Rocket stopped struggling and Quill put him down.

"We'll he's not." said Gamora, flustered. "You said the guy who kicked Rocket out of that window was the same guy who you knocked down with the rocket-boost. That's the guy you knocked down with the rocket boost." said Gamora, pointing at the Kree to the left of the one Rocket had just shot.

"Really? Oh yeah. My bad." Said Quill. "Sorry!" he said to the guy now writhing on the floor in agony.

"Yeah, sorry about that pal." Said Rocket, raising a paw in apology to the Kree leader, before turning to his henchman and cocking his gun. "Hi there!"

It took Drax and four sheriffs deputies to pull him off.

"Rocket, not cool!" said Quill, when he calmed down some and ran out of electro-rounds. "There are police everywhere.

"I think I'll put that down to delayed shock." Said the sheriff, gazing at the ceiling "and a heart-felt desire to ensure that the prisoners were well secured. As for the other matter… I know you by reputation Mr Rocket. Word is you're a bounty hunter by trade?"

"When I can't get merc work or get bored robbing banks." The sheriff pretended not to hear.

"So as a licensed Bounty hunter, you have a license, right?" Rocket glared sullenly, but nodded and fished out a very bartered looking filmy from some dank pocket in his body-glove.

"So as a licensed bounty hunter, you must in fact be registered as an officer of the court somewhere in this quadrant. Say as a Justice of the peace, that being the most common route to a bounty-hunting license.

"Wait, Rocket is a justice of the peace? _Rocket?_" said Quill

The sheriff grinned. "Most systems it's not a hard qualification to get. All you need to do is pay a registration fee and get someone to vouch for your good character."

"Wait, Rocket got someone to vouch for his good character. _Rocket?" _ asked Quill. He paused for second. "Were they drunk?" he paused again "Was it Groot?"

"Hah ha. It might surprise you to know they spoke eloquently an' touchingly as to my good and moral nature." Said Rocket, growling.

"Really, what did they say?" asked Drax. Rocket waved him away.

"Well, they were speaking through an interpreter…"

"It was Groot." Said Gamora.

"Yeah. So?" asked Rocket. "Still legal, right?"

The sheriff smiled and walked off. "Seems to me that as a justice of the peace you're insured against injury or lawsuits by the court that licenced you, so long as you kept paying your fees. If for whatever reason, bounty-hunting being such a notoriously unreliable source of income, you fell behind on your fees, a bulk-payment to get you paid up to date would protect you from any lawsuits arising from accidental firearms discharge in the course of you duties."

"How much? Asked Rocket, and fifteen minutes and two inter-system calls later, Rocket was in the clear and the team poorer by three-thousand units and the team released unconditionally until the eventual trial, according to a local circuit judge they called who had bigger problems out here on the fronteer worlds. The sheriff gave Rocket a big slap on the back, that made him wince, whipped his hand on his pants, and walked away to deal with the prisoners. Quill sided up to Rocket.

"You okay? You're looking pretty done for?"

"I look like Roadkill. I smell like week-old Roadkill. I need a hot shower, a cold drink and a good doctor. But given my luck with findin' doctors who have any clue how it all fits together with me, I'll settle for a good veterinarian." He winced and shifted the cloth around his crotch uncomfortably "one good at setting fragile, fragile bones."

That's when Quill knew it was serious: if Rocket was even tangentially comparing himself to an animal, he must be desperate.

"Okay buddy, we'll get you there. Gamora, Drax, team mate down. Drax, you go get Star'l'in's stuff from that motel, get it back to the ship and secure, we'll call and get you to meet us at the veterinarian's okay?"

Drax nodded, and walked out. As he did, he noticed a small black object lying in a pool of broken glass. It was rockets shock-prod. Without thinking, he picked it up and put it in the pocket of his pants.

Rocket would probably be wanting it later.

**Chapter three: epilogue (Digestif)**

"Cuts from glass, minor abrasions, major abrasions, second degree burn to the right shoulder, ligament damage to left anterior talo-fibular ligament, calcaneo-fibular ligament and posterior talo-fibular ligament," said the veterinarian counting off from a data slate as Quill and Gamora stood glumly in the waiting room. Behind them, not quite muffled by the doors, they could hear Rockets treatment.

"- I swear lady, you get that damn thing away from me and get an _ear _thermometer, Or I'll jab that somewhere even it's never been before, like an eye!"

-"eight bruised ribs, three broken ribs, one cracked mandibular pre-molar, burnt out axillary servo in his arm I had to call an engineer to replace-"

"-no offense lady, but I don't get on well with people in white coats. Hey, what the… _help!_"

"Bruised testis, fractured baculum; now _that's _something difficult to fix, I can tell you. Wanted to 3D print a new one, a lot of his skeletal system is 3D polymer anyway, but he had… opinions on that. Had to inject nanites to re-alight the bone and start building a protein scaffolding around it that will hold until it sets. Without anaesthetics, because the subject's endocrine system"

"Rocket."

"Excuse me?"

"His name is Rocket." Said Quill. "You might not want to call him 'the subject' to his face." Said Quill. Gamora, who knew what the word baculum meant, winced, and tried not to laugh. The veterinarian looked at Quill, and sighed.

"Look sir, I know your… friend... is unique and no doubt very special, but he bit one of my nurses and used such language one of the others had to leave in shock. I have no doubt that what's been done to him is horrible, and no doubt that he's felt that for most of his life he's been alone because people see him as something of an oddity because of what they did to him. He's wrong: he's been alone for most of his life because he's a jackass. Now, what they did do to him was give him chemical-warfare systems designed to protect him from most drugs and poisons, but leave his kidneys and liver more or less untouched. Do you understand the implications? The dosage between a painkiller having no effect on him and one destroying his fragile kidneys is negligible. I hit him with enough Fentanyl to put a creature of his mass out for two hours, and he still jumped off the table when I tried to make a preliminary incision to repair that servo. Anaesthesia just doesn't work on your friend: and given the vast about of surgery he's had to make him what he is, they either developed something I've never seen to keep him under, some experimental zydrate derivative of similar, or-"

"Or?" asked Quill. The Doc shrugged.

"Just, just take care of your friend. He's an ass, but if something really bad happens to him, I don't think anyone bar whoever made him would know how to fix it. And I doubt he'll like that. Other than that, he's good to go." Said the veterinarian, holding up a plastic cone. " You'll want this."

Quill stated. "He's sentient, he's not going to chew out his stitches!"

"Oh, I never said there was any medical reason for it. He's just a jerk. You want the cone of shame or not?"

Quill considered it. "Tempting, but I'm gonna have to pass." He said, as the doors to the surgery swung oven and, wincing slightly as he walked, Rocket appeared. Somehow Quill had been expecting him to be in an ass less medical gown, but no such luck, he was in his usual armored body-sock. He guessed veterinarians didn't stock them.

"Hey, buddy, how you feeling?"

"Shut up, pay the man, and let's get back to the ship. Groot needs feeding and a bed time story and I'm wasting valuable drinking time here-" Rocket stopped suddenly. Drax had entered, holding what looked to Quill like a black metal roll of quarters until memory kicked in.

"Hey, that shock-prod. You must have dropped it. Glad to get it back?"

"Huh. Oh . Yeah. Glad." said Rocket, looking anything but. The color drained from the visible bits of his skin and he looked hurt, almost afraid _must be in a lot of pain from the fight. _Quill thought, pressing on with the conversation. "Where did you get such a nasty little weapon anyway?"

"Had it as long as I can remember." Repeated Rocket, stating at Drax and curling and uncurling his fingers _almost like he's about to draw a gun on him _thought Quill, frowning. Rocket stared at Drax nervously, as he came forwards.

"You dropped this." Said Drax, holding out the shock prod. Rocket watched uneasily, as if Drax had just offered him a venomous spider. After a moment of studying both the prod and Drax's eyes his paws shot out snake-fast and snatched the weapon back. "Thanks." He muttered gruffly. "But don't go touching my stuff, okay?" He huffed, limping off at high speed. He quickly hid the weapon away, where it could cast no accusations.

Quill and Gamora shared a look, and Shrugged. It wasn't like they didn't know Rocket was messed up, and it could still be the Fentanyl talking. They paid the man: they had set up a communal pot for medical bills on the first day after leaving Xandar, because they would be stupid not to, and then went back to the ship after Rocket.

Drax watched them go, trying to hide how worried he felt. Rocket seemed genuinely frightened to see Drax with that weapon: and Drax thought he knew why. He wondered if he should tell the others. He decided not to. If Rocket wanted them to know, he would tell them, he reasoned. And anyway, he could be wrong. They may be his family now, but these were not his people. They painted pictures with lies and lived happily in them, and it was impenetrable to him at times. It was, after all, just an old shock prod. It could have come from anywhere. There was probably no significance at all to the faded laser etching, just visible on the worn handle.

_Property of Keystone Life Sciences: Project P-13_


	5. Bit of Both holiday special: Part 1

**Bit of Both holiday special**

**Authors note: this doesn't follow on as closely to the end of chapter two as chapter three does, And I'm not sure in my own mind if it even happens chronologically between two and three. It might in fact happen in an entirely parallel cannon. It has little to no bearing on the overarching story I'm trying to write, is silly, goofy, and makes really very little sense. You should probably stop reading now and find some better, sensible, fanfiction. Seriously, why are you even still here? Go and spend time with your family: it's Christmas. **

**Happy Holidays.**

**BunnyRock**

_It was the night before life-day, and all on the ship, not a creature was resting, not even poor Groot..._

"Merry Christmas crew!" yelled Quill as he staggered down the access ladder from the cockpit into the common area weighed down with bags and boxes of festive treats. The crew, who had been quietly playing cards whilst he was out, stared: Quill was wearing a bright-red conical felt cap of some kind that he'd lined with awful faux-fur and added a white bob to the tip of. They were all looking at him with expressions running the full gamut from curious (Drax) confused (Gamora) Ecstatic (mini-Groot, as always) and Horrified (Rocket, although it didn't stop him helping himself to some more cards from the bottom of the deck while the others were looking away.)

"What?" asked Quill.

"What are you wearing?!" Asked Gamora. "You look ridiculous Peter!"

"And you're wearing a hat." Added Drax, innocently, seconds before Rocket could. Quill frowned.

"It's a Santa hat. I found a guy selling fabric who made it for me."

"A What?" asked Rocket, trying to decide which of the two ridiculously overpowered hands he'd just made from the deck he should keep, as without looking Gamora, who was getting used to this, reached over and knocked his cards out of his hands.

"A Santa hat. You know. Santa Claus, Father Christmas _Père Noël, _ Kris Kringle, Jolly old Saint nick. Any off this ringing a festive jingle-bell?"

Drax frowned. "Did all these people own that hat?" Gomora, who had been paying the most attention when Quill went out shopping, wrinkled her brows as she tried to work it out. "Is this connected with, oh, what was that called, the terran festival that Yondu let you celebrate on life day…"

"Christmas! Yeah, so I figured, we've still got a little cash, were gonna be holed up in this space-station overnight, may as well introduce you to a few terran Christmas traditions. I got hats for us all, food, decorations…"

Rocket spat at the mention of Life Day, as he had all day.

"Life Day: what a rip. Excuse for fat rich oligarchs to eat themselves to death while people get trampled in shopping malls or left to freeze on the streets. Meh, why bother? It's a day like any other."

"It is traditional on most planets with seasons to want to celebrate Life and hope in the depths of winter." Said Drax. "Although, since the adoption of the standard Xandarian calendar it only falls in winter for specific hemispheres of around 40 planets at the moment, so many develop summer celebrations at this time,: such as the Strine and their tradition of life-day beach barbecues."

"Yeah, well if you're on Strine the beach is about the only place the flying spiders aren't about to murder you. And even then there's the cuboid jellyfish and estuarine leopluradons to worry about." said Rocket. "I'm just saying Life-day's a con."

"I disagree. It is good to celebrate life, family and hope in the darkest point of the year" "Said Drax. "My daughter used to love life day…" he started, before trailing off.

The ship seemed that much darker and colder.

Gamora reached over and took Drax's hand "I used to love life day too, before I lost my family."

"Yeah, and Christmas with my mom…" said Quill, before running out of words.

Rocket looked from one to the other, and then to Groot. He sighed, then picked himself up with a steely look in his eyes, like he was preparing for battle. "Okay, give me the damn hat. Let's do this."

After that, it wasn't so bad.

Rocket and Gamora decorated the ship under Quill's careful eye, whist he and Drax worked on the food. The decorations weren't much: paper chains made from old legal flimys with names and dates and warrants, a cardboard fireplace mounted under an air vent at Quill's insistence. Rocket salvaged a string of multi-colored LED's from the local station junkyard to make some lights whilst Gamora folded little origami baubles and made tinsel out of an old silver emergency blanket. Quill fretted about the lack of a Christmas tree, until he spotted Groot looking lonely and left-out as the others worked. Rocket was concerned at first, but once he had satisfied himself that the lights weren't about to electrocute or set fire to Groot, he was perfectly happy, although entirely baffled, to let Quill drape Groot in lights and tinsel. Groot seemed to love it, particularly the little star-shaped hat Gamora made him. Drax and Quill roasted vegetables and a nice plump lizard (_the closest thing in many years that Quill had found to turkey)._ Once the ship was as decorated as it was going to get, Gamora and Rocket came over and tried to understand the point of egg-nog.

"People actually drink this?" asked Gamora, tilting her cup. "Willingly?"

"Well, yeah. On earth our milk isn't usually blue, and we usually use bird eggs not snake, so it's not like it's this color back home but still…"

"I like it." Said Rocket, who had drained four cups and acquired a ridiculous blue moustache that Quill and Gamora had instantly formed an unspoken agreement not to tell him about. "Milk, good, hot milk with eggs sugar and spice, good. Hot milk with eggs sugar and spice and _booze_, even better." He held his cup up in both paws, for once looking almost cute. "Any more?"

After that, Quill sat them down and tried to explain to them the finer points and deeper meaning behind Christmas.

"I do not understand." Said Drax. "Explain again."

"well, it's kinda… Look: it's celebrating Jesus's birthday, allright? He's like a really big deal in one of our planet's main religions. "

"So it's a religious celebration?"

"Well kinda. Sort of. It's also about family, and food, and presents. It a lot about the presents." said Quill, with the brutal honesty of someone who left earth before the age of ten and was as greedy as only a little boy can be. "Mostly that. And Santa."

"Who's he again?" asked Rocket.

"I have no idea." Admitted Quill. "But he's a great guy. He brings you presents if you're good. He brought me my Walkman: all Jesus did was die for people's sins."

"He gives you stuff?" asked Rocket. "Why, what's in it for him." He paused. "And how good are we talking about? I crashed a ship into Ronan, broke my tail, helped save Xandar. That's got to be worth something, right?"

Quill looked worried, as anyone would when trying to fit such massively opposing ideas as "Rocket" and "Good" into their head at the same time. Quill waved his hand dismissively. "He only visits people on earth." He said. Gamora looked at him sadly. She was pretty sure that this Santa was a folkloric figure who didn't, when you got down to it, exist. And she was pretty sure Quill knew that. But she was also pretty sure that when Quill had been taken by Yondu the idea that Santa hadn't visited him because and only because he was no-longer on earth had been an important anchor for him, linking him back to his home. In many ways Yondu was pretty clever in getting Quill to merge Christmas and life-day in his mind: it would have made the transition to his new life much easier.

Quill tried to explain for about half an hour. He even sang a song about Santa. The rest listened in polite horror before deciding that anyone who knew when you were sleeping or awake and crept into kids rooms in the middle of the night was creepy as hell, to Quill's chagrin. Rocket freaked out and begun to build Santa-traps (_Quill was pretty sure he didn't **really** think Santa was going to break in in the night and was just utilizing a semi-socially acceptable excuse to fill the sip with man-traps, but it seemed to make him happy so he let it go.)_ Drax pointed out the similarity between leaving out milk and cookies for Santa and the traditional votive offerings of strong fortified wine and spice-pies offered to winter spirits in high Xandarian life-day traditions. Quill wondered what sort of deranged lunatics would leave alcohol out for Santa, despite Rocket thinking it sounded a great idea. He found the idea of someone piloting a flying sled whilst drunk particularly hilarious.

So they hung up their stockings, had a good meal of roasted lizard, had few drinks, and maybe a few more, and discussed Life Day presents they would like to give each other if they were rich. Quill wanted the NES Neural Entertainment System, a new direct-frontal lobe entertainment system that allowed users to record and share dreams and memories. Rocket snorted and said he'd _pay _not to have to see Quill's dreams "If I _wanted_ to see Gamora naked, I'd drill a hole in the particle shower." The traditional Christmas dinner fight then kicked off, but there was no real malice to it, and things were still friendly and festive when the call came.

Rocket had just told a joke that for once, was actually pretty funny, and Quill was laughing fit to bust a lung when the coms-unit rang. He staggered up, passing the bottle of wine to Gamora whist Rocket continued a comedic falsetto impression of a corrupt magistar he'd been paid by the magistar to break out of jail, but without his knowledge paid by his rival to then deliver to a gangster called Big Knife. "-and the guy was like _Oh, do you really think I need to put the sack over my head_ and I was like 'sure, if you don't want the cops to recognise you', and the guy actually did it, and then he got back in the trunk of the air-car on top of the body and starts to _tie his own wrists_ like I told him-"

"Hello, Peter Quill? uh huh, … yeah well I guess… now wait a sec, yeah, a… surely though when we had our records cleared after Xandar city… what do you mean, 'it only covers _criminal_ cases' well how much? _How much!?_" said Quill, shocked. "Is, is there anything we can do? I see. Yeah, happy Life Day to you too buddy."

Quill staggered back to the table in a daze. Rocket was still telling his story, and Gamora and Drax were still chuckling away when Rocket looked up, mid gesture, and froze.

"We, I…. they're taking the ship. The _Milano_. They've activated then stations holding clamps, we can't take off, we're, we're going to be impounded."

The crew stared. Rocket kept his paws held out in the same mocking gesture, but scowled and screwed up his face in shock. Gamora dropped her fork, without looking away from Quill. Drax and Groot just stared.

"What?"

"They're impounding the ship. We… I… when I first started running jobs for the Ravengers, independently of command, without an older pirate looking over my shoulder, I stopped here. At this space station."

"You said. You said it was _safe." _ said Rocket, accusingly, he was starting to grind his teeth, angrily.

"I… I didn't pay docking fees. I flew off from the refueling station without paying. Dey and Nova prime, they quashed all our criminal convictions, wiped the slate when we beat Ronan, so I thought we were safe. Apparently… apparently there was a civil case as well. The station owner sued me, they found against me _in absenta_. We… we need to pay or they'll repossess the ship."

"How much?" asked Gamora.

"Eleven thousand units."

"Eleven _Thousand?_ We've barely got two thousand between us!" squawked Rocket. "How are we supposed to pay eleven thousand?"

"We're not. The greedy bastards want the ship. We've got until the morning to get our stuff and clear out. I'm calling Dey, see if he can sort this out."

The crew sat there stunned as Quill called Dey. Dey was as shocked as they were, and promised to get back to them as soon as he could. That proved to be half an hour. The news was not good.

"When we redacted your criminal records and pardoned any outstanding arrest warrants, we did ask any civil plaintiffs to drop their cases, but I've checked with Nova Prime, and that's all we've got the power to do, ask. If the space-stations owners, HelpStone industries want to press their case, we can't compel them not too." Dey shifted uncomfortably. "I'd normally recommend you appeal to the owners better instincts, but the owner of HelpStone, a mister Eb Stone-Egorosc, is a famous hardass. He's not left his luxury quarters on that station since his business partner died, and as far as we can tell he's greedy, friendless, and cares only for units. I honestly wish we could help more, but I don't know what we could do." Dey shifted uneasily. "There are some places available on our Thanos task-force, consultancy work, mostly. If you felt up to it, well it's not the same as hunting him yourselves but the money would be okay-"

"It's not coming to that." Said Quill.

Dey looked defensive. "I'm just saying, if you need it-"

"It's _not_ coming to that." Said Quill, hanging up.

Despite the decorations, the ship felt cold again.

"You Idiot!" snarled Rocket. "Returning to the scene of the crime." He snared. Quill was shocked to see the seeds of tears in his eyes. "Just when we were starting to work, just when it was starting to be safe for me to… for me to… _every_ time I get close to having something _whole,_ some shit like this comes along!" he threw his plate of lizard on the floor. ""This is _exactly _the sort of reason I _hate_ life day_!" _

_"Hey!" _ yelled Quill. "I screwed up, I screwed up bad, and I admit it. So blame me! Don't take it out on our crockery, don't take it out on Drax's cooking and don't take it out on life day, you little Scrooge!" yelled Quill. He stopped, and his face suddenly went very blank, as it sometimes did when he was having an idea. "Little… scrooge."

Rocket, however was grabbing Groot and starting to energetically strip the lights from him. He'd also grabbed his bag off stuff, clearly believing in getting out before the bailiffs arrived.

"Rocket." Quill said.

"- I mean this is as bad as that time someone stole my clothes and I caught a cold and lost my voice. Spending life-day in animal control because you can't speak to tell anyone you're sentient, that was _real _fun-"

"Rocket, Shut Up! Those dream machines, the Neural Entertainment System. Could you hack one?"

"Huh?"

"Yes or no, could you hack one? Make someone experience a _scripted _dream?"

Rocket looked confused, but he saw something in Quills eyes. It looked like hope. He bit back his pithy retort and replied with a grudging "Yeah, I guess. The hacks for them have been on the outer-net for a while. You know how it is with any new tech: especially a life-day must-have."

"Go out. Buy three. Four if you can, but three at least. _Buy_ don't steal; if this works out we can leave here tomorrow with clear records."

"_Four? _On life day eve? That'll be a thousand units. _All _our money. We're on a station, you seen what happens to down-and outs stranded on space stations? If you're lucky they leave you to starve, if not, they _rescue_ you with_ Assisted Work Placements_. You ever seen an AWP camp? I have. Twenty-three prisons I've escaped from, and every one of them better than that. What the _hell _is so important that you need three high-tech toys?"

"Let's say I think I have a way we can reach this guy, convince him to wave the charges." Rocket frowned.

"Your gonna torture him?"

Quill stared "Um let me see…_NO!_ just get the damn things! Go! We don't have much time."

"Torture could work." Said Drax. "or blackmail."

"That can be plan B" said Quill, sarcastically. "We don't do that. Not now. Not on life day. Rocket, before you go, give me that info-glass of yours. You can get books on this? Earth books?"

"There aren't many terran books, but visitors to earth did add some to the outer-net, why?"

Said Rocket as Quill searched by author. He started at "D". He was not disappointed.

"No reason. Get the dream-machines, and hurry back. We'll need your break-in skills. And the rest of you, better start learning your lines." Said Quill, smiling as he booted up the book he was looking for. "Expect the first ghost when the clock strikes one…."

**Quill's Christmas Mix-tape: **_John Lennon -"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"_


	6. Bit of Both Holiday Special: part 2

Eb Stone-Egorosc was having a shitty life day, as unusual.

Sandus from purchasing was off sick, and with so many staff taking annual leave over the life-day period that left no-one to close their deal on synthetic lactose derivatives. Purchasing _needed_ to buy up enough lactose to cause a shortage eight-to-twelve months down the line: with time off from work, nothing else to do and a holiday that celebrated new life, conception rates spiked around life-day, and he wanted to be in a position to control the sectors baby-milk industry in time for the boom. He'd already bought up sufficient storage space to store the damn milk powder, and now the man whose job it was to make routine purchases like this was off sick. Eb made a mental note to fire him: what was the point of causing artificial shortages in baby food at the same time as a baby boom, if you weren't in a position to profit from it?

Some of the workers were sending the usual pious or charitable pers-com around the company coms-net. He'd have to get internal auditing and HR to estimate the time he was losing to personal communications. He wasn't sure which angered him more, the pious, clearly deranged, or the secular but charitable, possibly worse, in that they saw clearly in some manner, but still were corrupted by this taint of altruism.

They at least had some reason to be messaging him, he supposed, sourly. They worked for him after all, if they worked. Some cretins had actually sent him a com asking that he make a personal donation to those on the station without means of supporting themselves. He'd replied _I presume they have legs. Given such a means of support, I suggest they use them and remove themselves from my station. The AWP have a collection point on deck E, next to effluent repurposing. I know: my tax Units paid for it. _ Whoever had sent the spam hadn't replied. _Good: I've had enough of my time wasted by idiots today._ He looked over the figures for KreikDeClerk confections: maker of fine life-day spice-pies. The company would have closed earlier that week, for the two-week paid holiday they gave staff around life day. That brought a smile to his lips: the loss of productivity would make it so much easier to slip an ambitious poison pill onto their board. It would make his hostile takeover easier, and then he could begin asset-striping.

He checked his stock options, before remembering the price would be the same as this morning: the exchange closed early Life day eve, and wouldn't re-open until the day after. He pinched his thin knife of an upper nose in frustration. He was pretty sure it was shit like this that had driven his partner Brig-Kayar to his aneurism. He paused, reflectively. That was seven years ago today, he realised.

He needed food. He needed caffeine. He'd been working for near to 30 hours, not unusual for him. He needed to check his stock options. He needed his workers to do a full day tomorrow, but found himself obliged by tiresome labour laws to give them the day off. He needed to have _words_ with the house-keeper, who once again had left a glass of wine and a Votive spice-pie in the _lararium _in defiance of his wishes. He needed people to just forget about life day, and get back to work.

In the end, he decided he needed sleep more.

He was sure going to be disappointed.

Eb woke suddenly, afraid and reaching for his forehead, although he couldn't have said why. He got up, and poured himself a glass of water from his bedside table. _A bad dream. Nothing more._ As he turned towards bed he became aware of a noise behind him.

He turned to look. The noise seemed to be coming from the corner of the room where the stairs came up from the floor below. The servants entrance, the room that lead to his adjoining office suite, those he could have expected noise from… but the formal entrance to his quarters… no one had used them since the day his partner Brig-Kayar died. The lights on the intercom and the outer net station went crazy, his security screen showed hostiles in all rooms, and no-where, and died, the last synthesised chime hanging heavy on the cold winters air: Eb liked the cold; cold was cheap.

He heard footsteps on the stairs. Slow, dragging steps.

A figure appeared, stooped and bent low, bound in chains, head bandaged, hobbling up the steps . A figure Eb Stone-Egorosc recognised.

His business partner, Brig-Kayar, shuffling and moaning like a bad special effect.

Eb felt that he ought to say something at this juncture.

"So. How's being dead working out for you?" He then frowned as a far more important question came to mind "You don't want your money back, do you? That will was fair and legal."

"Seriously?" asked Brig-Kayar. His voice sounded a little off to Eb, but he supposed being dead would do that to you. "Your long dead business partner comes back to haunt you on life day eve, and _that's _your response?"

"Well, I was going to ask you for the money I spent getting power of probate back, but I guess you don't exactly have any cash on you." Said Eb, dryly. He paused. "Other than those two pennies we put over your eyes. "he conceded, grudgingly.

Brig stared, stupefied. "Well, that's a good sign. Two seconds in and we're off script. Aren't you even a little frightened?"

"Why should I be? I was never frightened of you in life." He went and poured himself another glass of water. "Drink? I'm sorry to say I got rid of the decanter you kept in your office the day of your funeral. It didn't give the right impression in a modern workplace. But the water's de-chlorinated."

"I'll pass. Not even a little frightened?"

Eb shrugged.

On the very edge of hearing, he though he heard a voice yell "I _told_ you we should have made him look all corpsey and stuff! Or at least let Gamora do it, she's firckin' green to start with!"

"Shudup." Hissed the ghost of Brig-Kayar under his breath, before rallying and pressing on.

"I come from beyond the grave, to bring you a terrible, terrible warning of what awaits you in the life beyond. A message of-"

"Why are you wearing rocket-boosters on your boots?" asked Eb, suddenly noticing them. Brig-Kayar froze up.

"To… to escape the … the horrors I face in the afterlife that my greed has spawned."

"Really? Like what?"

"Let's just say if you're stuck in an afterlife with all the bad guys history ever knew dropping the soap is the _least_ of your worries. Look, getting back to the point: I'm suffering in a horrible, horrible afterlife, because of all the awful greedy dickish things I did in life, okay? This chain I wear, each link was forged with a selfish and money grabbing act, and I can scarcely bear the weight, but it pales in comparison to the chain you are forging in life with your acts of-"

"It doesn't look that heavy." Said Eb. "In fact, it looks like it's a paper chain made from old filmys." Brig frowned.

"I'm a ghost, okay? Drift through walls, maybe throw a plate or two with poltergeist activity: not exactly strong. Besides, they feel heavier than they are, okay?"

Eb stared "Are those… old arrest warrants?"

Brig paused a second, then nodded. "For all my misdeeds in life." Eb squinted and read one.

"You bit a prison officer during an escape? In the knee?"

"He deserved it!" yelled the distant voice again.

"Also misdeeds in the afterlife." Said Brig, hurriedly. "Look, Eb, point is, you have to change your ways, give people a break and show some genuine Life-day charity, okay? Otherwise you're really in the deep crap once you die? Got it? So to spare you the horrors I face, you will be visited by three Ghosts-"

"Why? Can't you just do it?"

"Look its three, okay? That just how it works."

Eb frowned. "That seems inefficient . Could your afterlife HR run a manpower assessment for this? I'd be interested in seeing the figures."

"Look you mean old bastard, it's three, not counting me. I'm on day-release from maximum security undead nastiness because as your old friend they think you might take it more seriously if it came from me. These three are sort of specialists in reforming guys like you. Like us. Whatever. Just do what they say and everything will be fine if not." Brig raised his hands above his head and made a childish "Awooooooooo!" noise as he begun retreating backwards out of the room.

"Expect the first Ghost when the clock strikes one!"

Eb frowned. "Why the hell would my clock strike one? I don't want to be woken every hour of the night. My clock's silent: you should know, you brought it for me."

"I was speaking poetically. Expect the first ghost at 0100 standard."

Eb checked his clock. It was 1143. "So I'm just supposed to wait around for over an hour? Has anyone considered a time and motion study for you ghosts?"

"Look, just… just go back to sleep or something." Said Brig, pinching the bridge of his nose and fiddling nervously with what looked like some sort of primitive personal stereo. "You're a real dick to deal with, you know that? You could at least take this whole visitation seriously."

Eb snorted. "Yeah, because I've been visited by my long dead business partner. I'll just drift off again in no time. He said, grabbing a info glass and booting it up. The ghost of Brig-Kayar stared, aghast.

"Are you actually using this opportunity to catch up on some reading?" Eb looked over his half-moon glasses at the ghost and shrugged.

"Right. fine. Well then. Let's hurry this along then, shall we?" said the Ghost, now clearly pissed off, as he strode back down the stairs. Eb watched with mild interest, before returning to his glass. He found some new Life Day literature in the out of copyright section, and begun to scroll though the plot synopsizes looking for something diverting. As he did so, he became aware of voices arguing quietly.

"Okay this old bastard is a harder nut to crack than we thought. You got the memories lined up?"

"Sure, but I've not had a chance to go through them in depth yet. Could find any frickin' thing in there that we're not prepared for."

"Well, too late for that now. Wing it. And for god's sakes, keep the hat on. _And_ the rest of your costume."

"Yeah, not gonna happen buddy. You wanna dress someone up in a doily why don't you try Drax? There is no way I'm putting that on, and you can't make me bub."

"… Ghost of life day Present, ghost of life day yet to Pass, I think the ghost of life day Past needs some help into his costume… Grab him!"

Eb looked up from the novella he'd found as the sounds of scuffling ebbed and flowed. At one point there was a distinctly animal yelp, and a plate rolled out from the servants quarters and skidded across the floor. After a few moments of swearing that would have blistered the paint on the walls, if Eb had permitted any, the next ghost appeared from behind the door of the servants quarters, staggering slightly, as if he'd been shoved.

Eb was reminded of the disgustingly cute life-day cards his maiden aunts used to send, including a practically awful one he'd got when he was six featuring a kitten that some probable sociopath had forced in to a Xandarian baptismal gown.

That ghost was quite a lot like that, except in this case the kitten would probably be the mangy one no-one wanted at the sanctuary that they'd have to quietly drown in a bucket to stop it fighting with the others. It's clothing looked like someone had tried to replicate an antique nightgown and pointed nightcap, but possibly someone with no talent at sewing, who had only ever had a nightgown roughly described to them, and then had had to force it over a very unwilling individual who'd done their best to shred the lace with his claws. The ghost itself, insofar as you could see it through it's horrible costume, appeared to be about three foot of fur and barely controlled rage.

The ghost stopped suddenly, aware that he could see it. The ghost then pulled itself up to its full height, at least a third of which was nightcap, puffed out it's pigeon chest as if trying to martial whatever dignity it had left, and declared with all the ringing conviction of a first-grade school play.

"Behold. I am the ghost of Life-day past. I am here for your improvement."

"I don't need improvement." Said Eb.

"Your frickin' salvation then pal. Without these visitations you cannot hope to escape the fate of-" the ghost stopped, and sniffed the air. "You got wine and spice pies? Why didn't anyone tell me?" declared the ghost, before moving over to the _lararium _ and starting to eat with such speed, the word 'Engulf' was more suitable. Eb frowned.

"That's a Votive offering you idiot! It's for the _Lares Familiares_!"

"It's for Larry's families? Who's Larry? A bigamist?" Said the ghost, taking the solid silver tray the votives were on and secreting it under its robe with no sign of guilt.

"The _Lares Familiares! _ It's an offering to household spirits for good fortune and aid over life day- Oh."

The Ghost grinned. "Yep. Household spirits. That's me allright. Speaking of spirits, you got anything stronger?" He said, tilting the wine glass towards him. Eb shook his head. The Ghost of Life day Past shrugged and downed the wine in one. "Pity, you get bonus salvation points if you have any whiskey. Votive offering, Huh? Didn't have you down for the hokey mumbo-jumbo type."

"You're a ghost."

"And you're an ass. But fair point." Said the ghost, cleaning crumbs out of its whiskers delicately with its clever little paws. "Okay; Ghost of Life day Past. I do exactly what the name suggests. We're gonna go look at all the life day's you've lived before, and the important lessons you could learn from your past self, before you became bitter and jaded and kind of a dick."

Eb frowned. "That seems like a weird way of doing things."

"Tell me about it: I was holding out for Ghost of life day yet-to-come, but apparently you need to be tall for that. Fucking prejudice everywhere." The Ghost waddled up to Eb. "take my hand." Eb stared. The Hand was tiny, and surmounted by five viscous little claws, none of which was too clean. He grabbed the alcohol hand sanitizer gel form his bedside table and gave his hands a good coating before he took the ghosts hands. They were surprisingly warm, and very slightly sticky.

The ghost looked from Eb's face, to the hand sanitizer, then back to Eb again.

"Well screw you!" said the ghost, before the walls of the room faded in a very cheap looking dissolve effect, and Eb found himself in his old schoolyard, on a cold winter's day.

"My old schoolyard." Said Eb, to the annoyance of the ghost, who as pretty sure that was his line. "There's Jamal, and Sinead, and Krull and the foreign exchange student the Dread Kutthuthn. All my old playmates. Hey, fatty Jamal! Who's small now! Give me all your lunch money or I'll wedgie you into next week!"

"Yeah, nice try Bub, but these are but shades of what was once was, they can neither see not hear nor touch us in any wa-" a kicked ball hit the ghost of life day past square in the nose, and knocked him clean over. "Little shits." He muttered, picking himself up off the floor. Eb had already wandered off, and was making rude faces at one of his old teachers. "Last time I trust Quill to program the safety cut offs of a dream machine." Muttered the ghost.

He followed Eb Inside. Eb saw a figure siting alone, and stopped and stared. "Maybe this is where it all started. The lone student, sitting by himself. I never really had any friends, and my father worked off world so I boarded in the school, even on life day. I mean, who could want normal friends when I had all the great philosophers and thinkers of the world, just a click away on my glass?" Eb rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. "Maybe it was the memory of all these awful, lonely Life-days that put me off it for life."

The Ghost of life day past looked from past Eb alone, with nought but a info-glass for a friend, to present Eb, without even that, and said these heart-warming words:

"You're fucking kidding me right? _oh no my dad's not here for life day my life sucks so hard?_ That's _it?_ You're playing Spice-pie splat on an info glass, and there's a life-day meal cooking in the next room and a bunch of other kids staying at school over life day, we _literally _just saw them in the playground, and you're complaining that your life-days sucked? Man the fuck up you cantankerous old bastard."

"Hey, the fact my parents were never there on life day really hurt me emotionally, and less of the old, I'm fifty-one"

"Well _excuuuuse me _princess spoiled brat_. _You wanna know what my life days were like as a kid, huh? Two weeks in the cold and the dark with_ literally _no-one about because they closed the lab and all the researches went home for the holidays. Two weeks in a Perspex box just a little bigger than my own body, hoping like hell the food pellet dispenser didn't break down and wondering if the janitor I'd see that week would be the one who moped the room and then left without even _looking_ at me, or the one who thought it was funny to poke me with his mop through the bars. Two goddam _weeks_, and when they was over, it was back to life as usual and all the electrodes to the brain that entailed. You're actually fucking playing a computer game on your info slate, for fuck's sakes." Said the ghost, bristling with rage. "Next vision!" he snarled, holding out his hand.

Eb frowned. "But in just a second my sister is going to come in and tell me that dad's come home, and doesn't blame me at all for mom's divorce, and that he wanted me back. It was one of the happiest moments of my childhood. It really made me believe in life-day for the first time in my life."

"Well ain't that nice. Next vision!" yelled the ghost, grabbing Eb with one paw and using the other to flip the bird at Eb's younger self.

The room faded in the same cheap dissolve, and Eb found himself at the Life-Day party from his first job: old Perryfluff's venture capitalism and tax planning annual party.

The ghost of life-day past stared. "Holy crap! Why are there so many strippers?" Eb shrugged. "It was the 3380's. you should see the amount of 'slaught me and Brig-Kayah were doing. Hey, look, there's old Perryfluff himself: now he knew how to put on a life-day party!"

"Which one is he?" shouted the Ghost. The music was so loud he could feel it shaking his implants.

"The one doing a line off a stripper's breast."

"So again, which one is he?"

Eb pointed, "top left."

Perryfuzz looked like nothing quite so much as an extremely happy beached whale, as he bounced a stripper off one knee sending interesting tidal waves though his flab. A harried looking young man in a suit came up to him with a data-slate and asked "-excuse me mister Perryfuzz, me and mr Brig-Kayah have been going over the annual figures, are you sure we can afford this party?"

"Ah, Come on Eb. It's life day. A time for celebration! Enjoy yourself. Have some wine, have some blow, go dance with that nice girl from legal you've had your eye on. Enjoy yourself my boy! Go with the flow, Eb." said Perryfuzz, before roaring with laughter at his own joke. The ghost and Eb looked, although the ghost kept trying to snatch drinks from memories only to find his hand going through the glass.

"Oh come on, but a football hits me? How does that work? Anyway. Here's a younger you enjoying life day. A good guy to work for?" Eb shrugged.

"I loved it at the time, less so when the government found that he'd spent all the money they gave him to develop a stainless steel time-traveling car and spent it all on blow and he got arrested. Me and Brig-Kayah bought up what was left of the company after that. There's us there, always working."

"U-huh? Said the ghost, disinterestedly, until he overheard what Brig-Kayah and younger Eb were saying "-So should we give them the cash or not, their figures look sound, but Keystone is an high-risk area to invest in." At mention of the word Keystone, the ghost froze up. Younger Eb looked at the figures, and then shrugged. "Flip you for it." He said, pulling out a coin. They flipped, the coin bounced off a strippers ass and then landed on the floor, spinning, Young Eb, Brig-Kayah and the ghost all craned over to see it.

"Heads. Fund them. Biotech is a grown industry, and anyone crazy enough to operate out of Halfworld is up for government grants from the regional development agency." Said Young Eb, putting down the slate. The Ghost rushed over to it to confirm exactly what it was they had just funded.

Older Eb was watching the party. Across the room, a young woman moved shyly though the madness. "Ah Belle. You know Ghost, I nearly married that woman. Seeing here again, I sometimes think that there is more to life than Units after all-"

The ghost of Christmas Past then ran across the room and tackled Eb and tried to throttle him.

"Bastard bastard bastard _bastard!_ You venture capitalists and bankers are all the same, you think you can just throw money around and it don't fuckin' matter? Eh? I'm gonna skin you, you hateful cun- Hey!" Yelled the Ghost of Life day past, as Brig-Kayah's ghost grabbed him from behind and pulled him off, struggling.

"What was that about?" yelled Eb. "

"You funded them, you damn well paid for them to build that lab! I ought to strap you to a table and show you _exactly_ what they did there you little-"

"Not cool Rocke… ghost of life day past!" yelled the ghost of Brig-Kayah. "We're here to save him, remember?"

"He ain't worth saving!" yelled Past.

Eb leapt up, furious. "You _attacked _m me over some crappy little mon-and-pop biotech firm I gave start up cash to three decades ago? I thought you were supposed to be here to help me."

"Fuck you!" snarled the ghost of life day past, ripping off its gown to reveal an armoured orange bodyglove, and stalking off. The Ghost of Brig-Kayah buried his face in his palms for a moment before looking up, and with a fixed, waxy smile declaring: "Next Ghost. Bear with me just one sec." he said, before sprinting after the Previous Ghost.

"_Ghost of life day present, stat. Get into the robes, Now! And for Christ's sake leave the head-dress of vines alone. No Drax I don't care how much it inches!- what do you mean you think it's poison vergiatium? Give it here-"_

Eb sat down gloomily on his bed, which had re-appeared, and read some more on his info-glass.

After a few minuets, the Ghost of Brig-Kayah re-appeared, and shepherded him into his own office. "Hurry hurry hurry, no time like the present, if you'll pardon my joke."

Eb took the door handle in one hand, braced himself for whatever fresh insanity awaited, and stepped in.

"Ho ho ho. oh. Come in, and know me better man. Be not afraid, for I have no intention to harm you. Unless you are associated with either Ronan the Accuser or Thanos in which case I will kill you. That notwithstanding, come in, and know me better man."

Eb stared.

A huge, bald, ritualistically scarred and tattooed man stood in his office, surrounded by fake fruit, and wearing what appeared to be a curtain. He was also wearing what looked like a huge knot of poison verigiatium on his head, and carrying a traffic cone stuffed with tuber-chips the Eb suspected was supposed to be some sort of cut-price horn of plenty. He looked quite embarrassed about the whole set up.

"What is this, some sort of Toga party?" asked Eb, sourly.

"No, but yes in the sense that there is more than one person involved, so we technically form a party, and I am wearing a toga. But in the colloquial sense no. I am the Ghost of life day present, which is to say, the present sense of time, not gifts. The name is somewhat confusing."

"Everything tonight is. Let's get this over with." Muttered Eb. Present nodded.

"Touch my robe." Said Present. Eb did. Noting happened. "Touch my robe." Repeated Present, in a louder voice. There was some quiet muttering from the under the desk about missing the line about 1900 siblings and that being the cue, but eventually there was an electronic ping and the same shitty dissolve effect. Eb found himself, for the first time in seven years, outside his quarters.

"We shall now see how people enjoy life day in the present day. Of course it's not really the present, because it's one in the morning on life day eve and only the very drunk or insomniacs are awake, so we will be viewing a simulation of what we think tomorrow's life day will be like, making me technically the ghost of the life day very slightly in the future, not to be confused with the ghost of life day yet to come, who is someone different."

Behind them came the now familiar sound of the ghost of Brigs-Kayar facepalming.

"Let us go to your long-lost love Belle's house, and see how she keeps the spirit of life day and how it enriches her life."

Eb frowned. "She doesn't live on this station."

"I know."

"Then why did we fade-effect to the streets of the station on a bustling life-day morn?" said Eb. The ghost shrugged. "Because it's in the script. Pathos, I suspect." He said, as they faded to a very generic looking living room, with a beautiful life day spread laid out.

Belle stood before him wearing a huge floral bonnet, and looked adoringly to her husband and children, and said "Happy life day! See how our lives are enriched by the spirit of giving and charity and love and… Quill. _Quill, _the scrip's just ends there! There's no more dialogue!"

Her husband suddenly looked panicked, and said in the same voice as the ghost of Brig. "Well it took me an hour to write, I just assumed it would take an hour to act out as well. Wing it!" he said, before replying in a far more formal tone "Oh yes, see how our life is enriched by the spirit of love and giving and not impounding people's vehicles on life day eve."

"How much more of this do I have to put up with? Asked Eb.

Belle's husband looked to the ghost. The ghost shrugged and the husband said. "May as well cut the scene with the nephew as well then. Skip ahead to the bit with tiny Tom, that the only bit anyone cares about anyways."

The Ghost nodded, and the room faded to a different one.

"Hey, that's Sandus from purchasing" said Eb, as they appeared in a living room crammed with children. "He said he was off sick, the bastard's skiving off to play with his kids! I'll fire his ass for this."

"Shut up and watch this scene." Said the ghost of Brigs, who had appeared at his elbow for some reason. "It's the best one in the story."

"How was the temple of our lord and savior Glycon? Asked Sandus's wife, pealing a snow covered robe off him. "Was tiny Tom good?"

"As good as gold." said Sandus."I was worried that people would stare at him because of the sock-puppet on his hand, but on the way back he said he wanted them to see him, because he thought that at life day it might be pleasant for them to be reminded of who made lame hands into sock-puppet hands, and who made sock-puppetry into a major money making religious cult."

"Really?" asked Eb, at the same time as a voice from under the Ghost of Presents robe, which then followed up with "You couldn't have just stuck with the original version from the book and leave him crippled, you had to update it, didn't ya?"

"Stories need to modernize every so often or they go state." Said Brig, as tiny Tom launched into a soliloquy about how much he wanted to go to university and study drama and liberal arts.

"This… lacks the dramatic weight of the original." Said the ghost of present.

"At least it's less frickin' sappy." Said his robe.

"Agreed." Said Belle, who was leaning thought the wall to watch the scene.

"Stop ruining my vision!" yelled Brag, with all the inquired seriousness only a terrible fanfiction writer can muster. "You'll miss the dance scene!"

"Oh. Woe is me." Said Eb, with leaden sarcasm. "because I really, really care at this point what happens to the very annoying child. Tell me, ghost, if I don't change my evil ways, will tiny Tom ever realise his dream of going to university and becoming a great puppet performer?"

The Ghost of Christmas present leaned in with grave seriousness.

"I see an empty diploma by the window, and a glove puppet, carefully preserved. If these visions remain un-altered, Tiny tom will not graduate from his first choice university."

"Oh. The horror." Said Eb. He watched the dancing continue. "How long does this go on for?"

"Nine minutes." Said the Robe. "The ghost of literary war-crimes over there made me program it, so I know." There was an uncomfortable looking shuffling from under the robe. "Can I come out now? No one with a sense of smell as good as mine should have to spend this much time so close to another guy's crotch, and that votive wine from earlier has gone right through me and I need to take a piss."

Brig's facepalmed, but Belle said. "Go on then, this was my favorite scene in rehearsal."

The ghost of life-day present turned to Eb and said. "Ask me if I have something under my robe to show you." Eb stared.

"Can I please get a restraining order taken out on you guys?"

The ghost of life day present flipped back his robe and said "Behold." underneath was the ghost of life day past, but in a grubby flat cap and waistcoat to make it look more urchin like, and a potted plant, which waved.

"I carry them with me as all men do. the boy is named Ignorance, the hermaphrodite plant is called Want. Beware them both, but especially the boy."

"Wait, are you calling me ignorant?" asked the small furry urchin, glaring upwards. "I thought Groot was gonna be ignorance?"

"The scrip makes clear the ignorance in this setting is male…"said Present

"Does the script make clear that if you call me ignorant with my teeth this close to your junk you won't stay male 'till next life day?"

"Skip ahead to the next ghost!" yelled Brig.

"Oh no." said Present, inching at his vine-hat again. "My time is nearly up, and soon I must die. Not in any literal sense, you understand, but as a metaphor for the fleeting joys of the present. I must leave you in the care of the next ghost, who will show you the way to your salvation." Said the ghost of life-day present, trying to ignore the fact that Ignorance had just balanced Want on top of Tiny Tom's head, and was now urinating nosily in the corner of the room.

"Stop that!" yelled Brig.

"Hey, apparently the script says I'm ignorant. I don't know any better."

Eb facepalmed. He then felt the prickle of a sword at his throat, and looked up again.

A tall figure in a billowing back hood was holding a sword to his throat in one powerful green hand.

"Oh spirit, I fear you more than any Ghost I have yet encountered. Do I take it you are the ghost of life day yet to come?" The ghost nodded, and beckoned.

They fade-effected into a street. Some men he once knew from the stock exchange from years past were there talking.

"I don't know how it happened, all I know is he's dead."

The others nodded. "Who will get his money?" one asked. Another shrugged.

"I would guess he died interstate, so the government, he'll hate that, old-school libertarian that he was."

"Will you go to the funeral?" asked another. The first one shrugged.

"Nah, that guy was a douchebag. It's life day, let's all go have fun."

"Classic writing there!" Yelled Ignorance/Past.

"Hey you've got to keep these things fresh somehow and _whoa! Watch were you're aiming these shoes are new!"_

Eb snorted. Future beckoned him on.

They were back in his bedroom, where they had started. His housekeeper was using his coms console to call someone. That annoyed him, who would pay _that_ bill?

"Finest linen." She said, holding his sheets up to the man she was messaging. "I got a good Suit as well, no need for one where he's going. And some other things, what can you give me?"

"Well, I recon' we could start at eighty units." Said the guy. Eb snorted. "I never knew the woman was such a good negotiator: I stole those sheets from a motel, and the suit is a courtesy of the morticians, I would imagine. I haven't owned one in years. Why bother when you work from home? And I don't understand: In a Christmas carol, why _is_ Scrooge supposed to get so upset when his servants steal his clothes from his corpse: just a few chapters earlier Marley was telling him all the awful things that await him in the afterlife: you'd think he'd be more concerned with that. You may as well cut to the graveside scene."

"Yeah." Said Brig. "I never figured that out myself and… wait, _What?"_ yelled Brig's ghost. But by then it was too late. Eb grabbed for the blaster in Bigs hip holster and spun around with it switched to maximum power and aimed at his face.

He stepped back and raised his hands, shocked.

"Honestly?" asked Eb. "The top life-day toy this year is a device that allows you to share and manipulate dreams, and you think for _one second_ that I'd believe I was coincidentally visited by ghosts this very night? Are you all gibbering retards?" yelled Eb, reaching for his forehead. He wondered why his instinct on waking had been to do that, and after a moment he found the NES unit and ripped it off. The housekeeper faded, and Brig's facial features dissolved into those of Perter Jason Quill.

Eb sneered. "Dey called me, begged me to release your ship, showed me the footage from Xandar of how heroic you had all been, so I was expecting some shit like this when I said no. I made you as soon as I saw those rocket-boots. But really, I expected better from the so called 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A NES hack? All those costume changes, but always so carefull to keep some sort of head-gear? Hiding NES units, are we? And Brig and Belle just how I remember them? Fancy that. And the visitation starting only after I went to bed, not before like in the book? Do you take me for an idiot?"

"You're read a Christmas carol?" asked Quill shocked. Eb sneered.

"When you were bickering I looked up terran equivalents of Life Day on the outer-net, and popular parables associated with them. This was the _second_ one on the list. I skimmed it each time you stopped to bicker. I could very nearly have read the full thing in that time! and now, I think I'll call station security. _Private_ security. No awkward questions asked by real police officers, just sell you all to Yondu for a quick buck." He sneered, hitting the coms panel. "Happy life day!" he snarled.

Nothing happened. He hit the panel again. Quill grinned.

"Yeah… to get in here and plant the NES on you, we had to disable the security system. You know when the electronics went mental as the first ghost came in? That wasn't part of the dream. That was Rocket. No-one's coming, and my pistols all have palm-print recognition."

Quill sighed and turned to his crew. "Well, I did _try_ to help him." He said.

"Plan B? asked Rocket, grinning evilly. Quill nodded. "Plan B."

Eb screwed up his face in confusion. "What's plan B?" he said. Drax hit him in the head with the solid silver votive tray, knocking out six of his teeth and fracturing his mandible and zygomatic bones. The rest piled in.

"Grab his legs, grab his legs!"

"Screw that, let me bite his kneecaps off!"

"_No!_ did anyone bring any Duck tape?"

"We can strip the cables of his bedside lamp, hogtie him with that."

"Or tare the sheet to strips."

"…how do you guys _know _this stuff?"

"An assassin and a bounty hunter and you need to ask? Quick, give him a lascavarian friction burn!"

"Not my lamp! It's an antique!"

"We could tie him with these troublesome irritant vines. They appear to be strong enough, but the oils in them might blister his skin if my scalp is anything to go by."

"Go for it."

"NOOOOO!"

"-and someone put a sock in it!"

"I cannot find a sock. Will these underpants suffice?"

"Are they clean?"

"… not anymore."

"Go for it."

"Mmmmph! Mmmmmph! _MUUUPH!"_"

"Put Down the shock-prod Rocket, that'll do." said Quill. He then leaned in and grinned his best winning smile.

"You see Eb, we honestly were giving you a chance. Before we NES'd you, Rocket hacked your computer." He said pulling out the underpants form his mouth. "And you'll _never _guess what he found."

Eb's eye widened in shock. "Oh gods, that partition in the hard-drive was supposed to be undetectable. I swear, I didn't know those ship parts were going to Ronan when I sold them, don't report me for trading with the emery, it's twenty five to life!"

"Huh." Said Quill. "Partition in the hard drive? I was just talking about all the lascavarian porn. Oh, and I don't have palm-print recognition on my blasters, that was a bluff. Hey Rocket, what's Nova's reward for handing over someone trading with the enemy?"

"Around 30 g." said Rocket, leaning casually on Eb's face and grinning, or at least showing a lot of teeth.

"30 g Eh." Said Quill. "You starting to like Life day then, Rocket?"

"I could do if they keep on like this, captain."

"Yeah, me too. Stick with me and next year maybe we ca do another of my planets tradition Christmas stories. I know just the one… it's the greatest story ever told and it's known as… Die Hard."

And, as Mini-Groot observed [ferociously happy dancing and wiggling].

Make of that what you will.

Happy Life day.

**Quill's Christmas Mix Tape: **_Let it Snow._


	7. and now a word from our sponsours

Gamora looked at the holocaster, and waved.

"Hi, this is Gamora, and that's Rocket."

Rocket grunted.

Gamora glared briefly, before going back to her fixed smile and addressing the 'caster.

"If you're at all attentive towards the English language, you may have noticed a few problems with the fanfiction you've been reading."

"The Author's a retard." Supplied Rocket, helpfully.

"Rocket!" Hissed Gamora. "Firstly you can't you that word, its offensive, and secondly he's just dyslexic. A lot of people are dyslexic."

"A lot of retarded people. Besides, he's got spell-check."

"Which brings us to the heart of the problem." Said Gamora, turning back to the 'caster.

"Although the author tries his best, and uses a spellcheck, and proof-reeds his own work, he has, well, it's sort of a mental block. He tends to see the words he _thinks _are there, and no matter how many times he re-reads them, if he knows what word he wants to be there, that's the word he sees, even if it's not spelt anything like the word that's actually there."

"How?" asked Rocket. Gamora shrugged. "It's hard to explain. He sees coloured nimbuses of light around letters. Particularly type. He doesn't look at individual letters so much as the colour and shape of the glow he sees around them. It's not unknown with dyslexics, but when he's trying to proof read, it presents some obvious problems."

Rocket snorted. "like the Enchilada Milk incident."

"… the _what?"_

"the Enchilada Milk incident. On the comments section on the _Digger_ webcomic, they were discussing a guy who took in abandoned animals and sentimental _crap_ like that, and they got to discussing how to make bottle formula for monotremes; Platypuses and Echidnas." Rocket noticed the _look_ Gamora was giving him.

"Hey, I'm not making it up! It was the _Digger_ comments section, you're lucky it wasn't _more_ mental. Everyone on that site was some sort of genius-level retard. They started doing in-jokes about _lead-smelting_ for Groot's-sakes. Anyway, BunnyRock spazzed up and wrote some gibberish that spellcheck translated to _Enchilada Milk _instead of _Echidna Milk_. And not just once, like three of four times, and he didn't notice it in proof-reading."

"Rouge Angles of Satin?" Said Gamora.

"What? Have you had a frickin' stroke or something?" asked Rocket.

"That's what they call it on TV tropes. When you get funny spell-check errors. Rouge Angles of Satin, look it up."

"Yeah, 'cause looking stuff up on TV Tropes is a real constructive way to lose a week before you know it." Muttered Rocket. "What we're saying is the guy can't proof-read for shit."

Gamora Nodded. "He's getting better with practice, but to spot the spelling errors, he needs to forget what it is he's written, otherwise he'll see the words he _expects _to see. And given that he can't keep a work in progress on his laptop without looking at it every few hours…"

"… he only spots the frickin' Enchilada Milk _after _ he's published. Something about seeing it on a website makes him forget what he's written. Makes him see it as being like any other frickin' story on this crapy site. Fresh eyes, or some shit."

"So what we're saying is, although BunnyRock is trying his best, spelling and spell-check errors will probably persist to some degree when stories are published on Sundays, but get cleared up after that. So if you find the spelling annoying or a detriment to the story, try looking at the site a day or too later, by which time he'll have a corrected version up."

"On Mondays?" asked Rocket. Gamora considered this.

"He does have a job and a life beyond fanfic." Said Gamora. Rocket snorted with disbelief at the 'has a life bit' and followed up with "so Tuesday then?"

Gamora shook her head. "Nah, he's far too lazy for that. Let's say Wednesday. New chapters every other Sunday. Corrected versions up on the Wednesday after."

"If you can call them corrected: the guy writing them's still a retard. Might not be perfect, but should have wiped the worst of the Enchilada Milk of the story."

Gamora frowned. "Stop calling Dyslexics Retards. It's pretty cruel. It's a real disability."

"The guy got a scribe to write his exams for him since the age of twelve and blagged a free computer off the government in university because he couldn't write with a pen like a frickin' adult. Real disability my ass."

Gamora narrowed her eyes "Are you still angry he wrote you getting kicked in the crotch into the story?"

"No. I'm just saying the guys not half as smart as he thinks he is. _I _could write a better fanfic than this. Hell: _Quill_ could write a better fanfic than this, and he's a thirty-something manchild. Then again, at least he's a _successful _manchild. I bet BunnyRock's still living in his dad's basement."

"Maybe he's saving up for a deposit. Besides, I really, _really _think you should stop mocking the guy who writes this."

"Why, what's the worse he could do to me?"

"Two words: Slash. Fiction."

Rocket stared straight ahead with a dull, dead horror.

"Quill/Drax?" he asked, hopefully. Gamora shrugged.

"No. I don't think so. Not with a title like _forever in fur._"

"Bunny's working very very hard on fixing the spelling, and you should all totally keep reading his stuff and say how much you like _this_ storyline and in _no way_ want to see him branch out into other stuff." Said Rocket, without pausing for breath. "For the love of _god_ don't tempt him to branch out into other stuff!"

Gamora grimed and winked at the Camera. "See you on Sunday." She said waving. "Suggestions for the Awesome Mix tape always welcome."

"As are suggestions for story ideas you'd like to see." Said Rocket, waving. "So long as you keep it clean." He said, with a touch of desperation. After a moment he paused, and looked around.

"Where the hell are we?"

"I have no idea." Said Gamora. "Just keep waving and hopefully he'll stop typing."

They kept waving

" Anytime soon." She said. "Anyti-

**Random Interlude Music:**_Yakety sax._


	8. Chapter 3 Part 1

**Chapter three: Old flames**

**Part One; Sunshine of love.**

It's amazing how quickly the terrifying becomes routine and the routine becomes terrifying. Kree hardliners try to murder you, and that's fine. Ronan was a pro, these guys' enthusiastic amateurs. Have a gun-fight and daring rescue in a burning building, and it's nothing, you've done worse. At least no-one asked you to grab an infinity stone. You learn that of six of those damn stones that could end the world, three are unaccounted for, with at least two probably being hunted by the worst bad guy imaginable. Finding one infinity stone nearly kills you all, and an expert on you tells you might have to find two more to stop someone else getting them, and you shrug and add it to the to do list. Get up, get the groceries, save the world.

If only getting the groceries was as easy.

"Moron! Moron, moron, moron_, moron!_" yelled Rocket, standing inside what was once a paper grocery bag and shredding it comprehensively. A packet of energy bars bounced off Quill's head, followed by a sachet of liquid plant fertilizer.

"Epiphytic fertilizer and _chocolate? _I gave you a list! A frickin' list! Brand names, ingredients, what to get, what to avoid. I'm wounded and recovering, Groot _died, _kinda, and may or may not grow back into the Groot I knew, and you manage to bring back _Epiphytic_ fertilizer and _chocolate?_ Newsflash: if ya wanted to poison us we have Tritium and Promethium in the ship's betavoltaic systems! Couldda saved you the walk!"

"Quill my freezy stick appears to be red-flavoured. I wanted blue." Said Drax, holding the offending iced snack. "I no longer want this. Take it back and exchange it for a new one." He said, handing back the freezy stick minus exactly one bite.

"Did you spend all the money I gave you for vegetables on beer?" yelled, Gamora, her head in one of the ship's lockers. "All you brought back was a case of Bligh Blue Ribbon! I can't stir-fry beer and I don't want to drink anything endorsed by leering bounty hunters!"

"Why not, you drink the caffeine when Rocket brews it! And technically Hops _are_ a vegetable!" countered Quill. Another chocolate-chip energy bar hit him between the eyes.

"Hops are a vine, dummy! The_ flowers _of that vine, before you say a vine is a vegetable." Snarled Rocket, looking for more things to throw. He threw the ball he'd been bouncing off the bulkheads when he was thinking, but Quill ducked it. He then found the ship's one clean spoon, and flung it. Quill, who was getting real tired of this shit, caught it mid-air.

"Hops are a vine? Oh are they Rocket? Who died and made you a horticulturalist all of a sudden?"

"Groot!"

"… wow I really walked into that one." Said Quill. He pinched the bridge of his nose with exasperation. So the beer was wilful on his part, and yeah he could see how Rocket would be annoyed by being brought food he couldn't eat, but seriously. It wasn't like the others were falling over each other to trek down to the store.

_Deal with the shit in front of you_ he thought.

"Rocket, so far as we know your Groot's alive and well, and I know it worries you, but seriously you cannot bring that up each and every time someone does something that upsets you. If you stop throwing them so I can take them back in one piece for a refund, I'll swap the energy bars and the fertilizer. Gamora, vegetables are in the bag Rocket's destroying: I didn't put them in the locker because there no room with the beer, and I didn't put them in the fridge because I'm scared to open it. Drax, eat your damn freezy stick, they all taste the same anyway."

"I wanted a blue one."

"I wanted to be Michael Jordan. Life is pain." These Rocket-boots would make me the best Basketball player ever if anyone out here played it, Quill thought gloomily. I have to introduce these guys to earth-sports. "Eat it or walk to town and buy another one, we can afford it."

"Just." Said Gamora, offering a hand to help Rocket out of the bag and pulling out an endotuber. _(Nearly three decades on, Quill still thought of them as Space-carrots. But green. And lemongrass flavoured) _Rocket grudgingly took her hand and let her help him down off the table: his shoulder was still swathed in blue burn-recovery gel, and he now had Velcro-splint covering his ribs for the good medical reason that it was holding the bone fragments in place until they knit. It didn't stop him hiding weapons in it, though. _Or snacks _thought Quill gloomily. It had been a shock to discover Rocket sitting on the table patiently picking all the bits of marshmallow out of Quill's secret cereal stash and squirreling them away when he'd got up to pee at 0300. As the team was rapidly discovering, with Rocket's sense of smell, you didn't have secrets from him on ship. Certainly not edible ones.

"So what's the news down-town?" asked Gamora, picking out the rest of the vegetables and rinsing them under the tap: Gamora hated cooking, and to be frank wasn't that great at it, but there was only so long she could stand eating MRE packs and had decided that the only way she'd get something healthy and fresh was is she cooked it herself. Quill didn't mind: Drax was a better cook, but his grasp of portion control or low-carb was about as good as his grasp of metaphor and Quill wanted to stave-off having to by bigger pants for a few months at least.

Quill shrugged "Still no sign of the mark doing anything, still nothing about Thanos or other attacks he could be behind on the news, still a quiet town on an out-of-the-way agri-world. John Heggerty has got Jane Hatherty in the family way, according to the two old ladies in front of me in the queue at the store, and Old tom has a new hat." After the bar fight the team had voted to lie-low for a while: Quill had taken it to heart: there was nothing of interest on this planet other than their mark. "Oh, and some more refugees hitching planet to planet trying to get transfer papers to travel on to Xandar." Apparently even with a big hole where the CBD used to be, Xandar city was still preferable to living in the Kree Empire, which was getting increasingly unstable since the war ended. "Nothing new from our mark."

Jim Star'l'in's life work had given them a little under seven-hundred possible leads on Thanos and his operations. Most of the leads were so goddam _scary _that the team had unanimously voted not to go after them without some serous back up, and had handed the intel over to Nova as soon as they could. When there were 100% again, and Quill was frustratingly aware that meant waiting for Groot to grow back, and once Nova had either found where these people were, or, for the ones with serious government or military connections, found some better evidence against them that a journalists word, _then_ Quill felt they should go for them. But without Groot and a small army of Nova Corps operatives to hide behind, he wasn't in a hurry to take on anyone whose rap sheet included the phrase "actual cannibal" "dangerous and unexplained powers" "singlehandedly slaughtered the entire war-crimes tribunal arrayed against him" or whose last name was "the despoiler". Not unless they were in fact someone who removed spoil for a living and it was all a tragic misunderstanding, he mused.

With Rocket injured as well, they'd decided to set their sights a little lower for first take-down of one of Thanos's minions: Vince Sandhurst.

"Ish hesh stillt im dat caffey?" asked Rocket through a mouthful of raw Endotuber before Gamora took the tuber away from him. She examined the bite mark in the end of it before shrugging and tossing it onto the pile of ones she needed to chop.

"Come again? Asked Quill. Rocket swallowed.

"I _said, _is he still in that café, Captain manpurse?" said Rocket, climbing up on the kitchenette work-surface with some difficulty and plenty of wincing as he worked his wounded shoulder and leg. He perched on the edge of the counter and peered over at what Gamora was doing.

"Sure, in at 0800 standard when it opens, sits by the door watching and listening to forte music until 1200 when the clerk arrives at the mailroom. He checks newly arrived packages, he gets angry, he goes back to his motel. Same as every other day."

"And we still have no idea what package it is he's waiting for?" asked Gamora, chopping off the Racoon-saliva covered end of the endotuber and flicking it towards the waste-disposal. Rocket caught it mid air, ran it under the tap, like he did with all his food, and then popped it back in his mouth. "Weash cannt" Rocket swallowed "We can't tell what he's getting 'cause the delivery company keeps the manifests, not the local mail office. I've hacked the town hall's mailroom, added a keystroke tracker and a back-door so well hidden Nova couldn't find it, let alone a mom-and-pop community post office run out of a shack, and nada. The postal network requires the _sender _to keep records of interplanetary packages, and since we don't know who's sending him this stuff-"

"We have no way of checking what it might be." Said Quill, gloomily. "But he goes every day, as soon as the county clerk opens the mailroom."

"And he's anxious" said Gamora, getting out a block of protein curd and slicing it into strips. They were having heardbeast with bell peppers. Except they couldn't afford the heardbeast. "Otherwise he wouldn't spend four hours sat opposite the town hall watching to see when the off-world packages arrive."

"And it's late, whatever it is." Said Rocket, reaching in and snatching a strip of protein-curd, running it under the faucet and bolting it down.

"We don't know that. He could simply be impatient" Said Gamora, mildly, before slamming the knife down into the work surface with a _thunk_ as Rocket darted in for a second strip. He jerked his paws back and checked his knuckles, examining the freshly trimmed fur casually as he replied.

"I do: He's been paying for his motel room one day at a time, and yeah, that could just be an attempt to put anyone observing him off the scent, but it's not gonna put _me_ off the scent. The guy's starting to smell, and that's not a metaphor. He's started re-wearing dirty laundry. The motel has a laundrette, but he's not used it. So either he takes Quill's attitude to laundry days, or he's not doing his laundry because each day he expects to get the package and get out of here. He packed enough clean clothes for five days, he's been here twelve. If the package was here on time he would have got it before he ran out of clean socks. Stands to reason."

"Wait, are you having a dig at _my_ hygiene? The only time's I've ever seen you change clothes is when the ones you're wearing acquire _bullet holes!_" said Quill

"Yeah but unlike you disgusting bald-bodies I don't sweat. 'sept my paws. And I wash my hands at face more often than any of you."

"Discussion of which of you two boys is the most disgusting slob aside, where does this leave us?" asked Gamora, taking down an orb-wok and putting it on the heat. Quill shrugged.

"Star'l'in said the guy had worked at a whole series of tech companies, and that each and every one of them had tech disappear just before he quit, only to turn up in the hands of guys associated with Thanos. We've no proof he's in industrial espionage, but he's defiantly a shifty character. Star'l'in even implicated him in an industrial accident that injured his own brother, Baz Sandhurst."

"So we wait until the package arrives, stall him, or the clerk, or both, and take a look at the package and add a tracking device before he gets his hands on it." Said Gamora, throwing sliced vegetables into the orb-wok before garbing it by the handle and spinning it: Quill watched as the internal baffles caught the veg and tossed it around like a cement mixer.

"That's the plan." Said Quill, gloomily. "The boring, boring plan."

"At least we're planetside. We've got a safe, reasonably comfortable place, food, and water." Said Gamora. "Water that none of us have gotten too friendly with before" muttered Gamora, darkly. The first thing they had done after touchdown was hook up the ship to the parking-lot's standpipe and flush the H2O system. The _Milano_ carried 40 gallons of water on board, which sounded like a lot until you realised that that total included the water vapour in the air, the water used as a solvent for the rebreather system and the water content of food loaded onto the ship and the water content of the _crew._ As Rocket pointed out to a very surprised Drax when he explained it, a space-ship is a closed system. Once it's left the atmosphere there's no way to add more water and it pretty damn difficult to get rid of any excess. Forget to calculate how much water the food contains or how much the crew are carrying around in their bodies, and when they start to breathe and sweat (_or in Groot's case transpire_) it out you'll get condensation forming in the ships circuitry, which due to weight limitations was almost entirely un-waterproofed. There was a condenser the ships manual called _number one water reclamation_, a glorified de-humidifier, but it could only handle so much and the water it sucked out off the air got pumped straight back into the osmotic membrane, as did the waste water from the sink (_Number three reclamation) _and the water from the centrifuge located underneath the head (_Number two reclamation according to the ships manuals. Who says Badoon don't have a sense of humour?)_ Although the osmotic membrane filtered on the sub-microscopic scale and all drinking water was UV sterilized you never quite got rid of the voice at the back of your mind that reminded you that the glass of water you were drinking today was, best case scenario, re-condensed from your sweat yesterday. Also, to save water and minimize the risk of getting the circuits wet if the gravity failed, the particle shower only used water if connected to a hose from outside the ship: and although the cleaning powder and air-nozzles would clean safely and efficiently in space, you never _felt_ properly clean afterwards.

"We'll I've repaired the link between the waste-disposal in the sink and number two reclamation so we can use the waste disposal without the head making that scary sound, but that's as good as it's going to get. The re-filtration would be better with a secondary osmotic membrane." Added Rocket.

"I'll add it to the _if we win the lottery_ list." Said Quill. "In the meantime, we need to deal with Vince, deal with whatever his package is, and work out what we're going to do with Star'l'in's archive."

Star'l'in had forbidden them to destroy his big-book-O-Thanos from his Hospital bed, people having opinions about the torching of their life's work, but on the other hand it was possibly one of the most dangerous privately held collections of information this side of the great lascavarin porn-hub. Names, dates, massacres, murders, mayhem. Leads on Thanos and infinity stones would be useful to anyone trying to stop him, or to a dozen lesser tyrants and generalissimos trying to emulate him. Rocket had been digitising it, painstakingly and with a lot of swearing, and sending heavily encrypted copies to Nova at Quill's instance. None of the crew was entirely sure that they trusted Nova, Rocket least of all, but even he acknowledged that perhaps they shouldn't be the only ones with this intel just in case something happened to them, like horrible lingering death. It was also why they had decided they should hide Star'l'in's original somewhere safe. Drax had wanted to find a remote planet and burry it, Gamora said she knew a Kylarian banking cartel who had unbreakable anonymous safety deposit boxes and asked no questions, Rocket wanted to fly it out to an un-inhabited star system and dump it at one of the Lagrangian points, and Groot had attempted to hide it behind his back, which might have worked if it hadn't been around four times his current size. Quill, however, had what he thought was a better idea, and had taken it to Xandar city's central library and sweet-talked the librarian on duty into showing him where they kept the doctoral theses.

She'd asked what subject. He'd said the history of accounting law. Ten minutes and one gutted tome later and Star'l'in's life's work was miss-filed in the dustiest corner he could find, somewhere no-one would look unless they desperately wanted to check how a long dead doctor of accounting got his diploma, and a convenient ten-minuets walk from Dey's office should something happen to them and they needed someone they almost trusted to pick it up. And it amused him to hide all the intel they had on infinity stones less than two hundred yards from where they'd used one in anger. Gamora had called him an idiot for that, as had Drax, and Rocket, but none of them had tried to take it back, and Rocket at least had seen the funny side of it.

"Right, we need to get a formal list of our priories sorted." Said Quill, as Rocket, sensing imminent food, seated himself at the table in expectation and, having certain unlovely habits in such matters, started striping out one of his guns, the phrase _a time and a place_ being a concept that along with other people's property, privacy and tact had ever quite settled in his mind. Quill noticed him testing the linear accelerator on a gutted rail-gun by seeing how high each coupling could levitate a neodymium slug. Quill grabbed a slug with a wild terran _whoop_ of victory, and advanced across the galley with it.

"Okay everyone, sit back and watch the ultimate, all purpose Terran system of group-organisation and information distribution… stuff." said Quill, striding across the room, writing out a note, and, using the magnetic Neodymium slug, sticking it to the ships refrigerator.

"Behold, the fridge-magnet!"

Rocket and Gamora stared. "What?"

"The fridge-magnet. If you have anything you need everyone to know, you write it down, and stick it to the fridge. See?" he said.

Stuck to the fridge, the note read:

STUFF TO DO

Find package

Work out what to do with packge

Get Vince Snd (crossed out ) sandhrst (violently scribbled out) _ Sandhurst_

Stop Thanos

Get grosseries: eggs milk bread infinity stones ect.

Fame and fortune.

Buy Eddie the Rac his membrain thingie so he'll shut up.

_I'm running out of famous racoon names to mock him with _Thought Quill. "Well?" he asked.

Gamora shrugged, more concerned with getting food out of the hot wok. Rocket said "Truly a prime example of Terran technology. Hey, you people keep working at it, someone on your planet might invent the chalk-board in, two, three decades tops."

"So that's one sarcastic, one disinterested, one ecstatic, thank you Groot. We have a tie. Drax, what do you think?"

Rocket snorted. "He walked out to buy a freezy stick five minutes ago. Didn't you notice?"

Quill stared, and bit his lip. "He's not likely to do anything… rash, is he?" he asked, as Gamora served lunch.

Rocket Shrugged, a pair of chopsticks in each hand and a napkin tucked under his furry little chin "He's a big guy. I'm sure he can look after himself."

* * *

><p>Drax walked down to the local township, more for something to do than to buy a simple water-ice. He understood perfectly the need to observe Vince Sandhurst from a distance and not make a move until he had acquired his package, but he found the waiting tedious and the continual bickering of his ship-mates more so. It was a pleasant day, despite the heat on this dusty little world, and he resolved to walk down to the Café next to the town hall and purchase a cold drink there. If he was regularly seen there, he reasoned, then no one would take his presence there amiss when the time came to intercept and delay the mark at that location.<p>

As he walked he noticed the increasingly large shanty settlement forming around the spaceport. Although a small peaceful farming world, this planet sat uneasily close to the frontier between Nova empire and Kree empire worlds, and with Kree nationalists unhappy about the peace deal with Nova, refugees had been flooding into border areas like this. The problem had become so bad that Nova, it resources stretched to breaking point by the incident with Ronan, had agreed to let the Kree consulates on a swathe of border worlds, this one included, set up an extraterritoriality authority for refugees: people fleeing the Kree Empire got to border worlds to find that the Kree empire was already there to meet them, and that didn't sit well with many. The locals wanted the Kree police to round up the refugees and take them back to wherever they came from because they didn't want them filling up their schools or taking their jobs, the Kree authorities wanted to use this as a chance to stop skilled workers it needed to rebuild it war-ravaged economy from fleeing and silence any dissidents who might try to set up governments in exile in Nova space, and the Nova Corp was trying to work with the locals, the refugees and the Kree police they had invited over to ensure that anyone at genuine risk of persecution if sent back to Kree space got moved on to Xandar, whilst at the same time trying to make sure that hard-nat nutters like the ones who supported Ronan didn't. this planet wasn't as bad as some, but there was still a lot of tension as this small, deeply pro Nova town found itself cheek by jowl with an ever growing refugee shanty town policed by the same Kree authorities they'd been at war with less than a year ago.

All in all, not a bad place to want pick up a dangerous or illicit parcel: if you could get it from the post-office, all you'd need to do was make it a few hundred paces and though the gates of the space-port into the refugee processing area and suddenly Nova had the mother of all jurisdictional headaches as you fell, temporarily, under Kree law. For the first time in a hundred years, there was land border between Kree and Nova, albeit a temporary one. That was another reason Quill had picked Sandhurst as the first one of Thanos's minions to go after. Nova Corp. couldn't touch him until he got the package, as he'd never been found guilty of any crime, but if the package was something illegal, they couldn't follow him easily if he fled into the refugee camp and straight onto the next ship back to Kree space. The Guardians of the Galaxy, on the other hand, could drag him out kicking and screaming safe in the knowledge that anything illegal they did to capture him, so long as it happened in the Kree camp, wasn't Nova's problem. Quill assured them that they could gag, hog-tie, wedgie and wet-willy him to their heats content so long as they got him back in one peace and didn't do anything illegal on the Nova side of the impromptu border, and whilst Drax had no idea what a wet-willy was, he was confident that if this individual had been working with Thanos even unknowingly, then he deserved it.

If fact he hoped it was as gruesome as it sounded.

In fact it was because he was trying to work his way thought some of Quill's more colourful terran sayings, and because he was wondering if the café still did that nice granita, that he didn't notice her until he was through the door and waiting to be served at the bar.

It was the forte music that made him turn around.

It was the toccata overture to the _quod cadit tempus molliter, _a piece he hadn't heard played since he left his home, a deceptively simple sounding piece, slow and soulful and speaking of lost loves, and popular, if that was the word, on his world in the aftermath of Roman's attack as so many struggled to express, without the use of clumsy metaphor or awful bluntness, their feelings of loss.

He turned, and she was there.

She was simply dressed, as if for travel, leaning on the forte and looking sideways across the room towards the veranda so he saw her in profile, and she was every bit as lovely as he remembered her, and that cut deep as knives. Large as life and twice as beautiful, was the women he almost married, back from the dead.

_She has no right_. He got up and, unthinking, checked his knives.

He walked over, in a swimming, soupy daze, and stopped just across the forte to her, and called her name.

"Isha?"

She looked around, suspired, and saw him. She stared deep into his eyes, and he felt lost in hers. She always did look so terribly innocently vulnerable when she was surprised.

Then she threw her drink in his face and, in the same frantic motion, tasered him over the forte.

She was out of the door and gone before he managed to struggle up from the ground.

* * *

><p>Drax returned to the<em> Milano<em> in a daze. Quill, Gamora and Rocket were having a heated argument when he got back, and he sat down at the fold-out table without really hearing it. He didn't hear what they were fighting about, and no-one tried to explain or ask where he had been, which he was obscenely grateful for. They may have spoken to him, but if they did they didn't wait for a reply, and he didn't notice. In a very real sense, he wasn't there.

In his mind, he was back on his home planet, twenty five years ago on a spring day. He was on a year-in-industry placement that his collage had found for him, what would later turn into his first real job, and he wouldn't meet his wife Yvette until a mutual friend introduced them at an office party, five years down the line. He ate his lunch in the park, as he often did on nice days, and admired the architecture surrounding him: it was a small inner-city park, but one in an area of the city were people had tired new things and modern, elegant buildings were going up at the rate of two a year. He'd brought his drawing pad to make some notes and sketches, for company and degree. He's still held up hopes of becoming an architect at that point, but his draftsmaship in ink-pencil wasn't good enough. He didn't know he'd end up as a modeller, and if he had at that point it would have upset him. He didn't yet know the great calming peace he would find when an architect or designer would walk in with their sketches and concept panels and they'd sit and talk and he'd go and get the easy-carve foam, and make their dream come to life for them in elegant 3D. He didn't know how soothing he'd find the physical act of shaping, turning the flat designs he was given into something whole, and formed and weighted and_ real_ in foam or plaster or balsa wood.

He didn't realise just how good he was working with knives yet. That came later.

He was sketching the curve of the cable-car pylon over the river when the music started, _quod cadit tempus molliter_ by a local amateur orchestra occupying the shimmering crystalline ovoid of the bandstand at the centre of the park, and that made him look over.

A young woman was sitting on the grass under a heavily blossomed tree, hugging her knees and laughing at a friend's joke, and as he turned to look at the band she saw him, their eyes met and she waved. Drax smiled and waved back, ink-pencil in hand. She saw it and laughed, and asked him to draw her and her friend. He smiled, a little unsure, but they were framed so well by the tree on one side, with the cable car behind and overhead, and the bandstand on the other, that he did. He usually hated drawing people: they didn't stay still, and he could never capture their essence the way he could for buildings. The nuance was always slightly off. But the young woman had an almost architectural beauty to her: in all honestly handsome rather than conventionally pretty, but with high elegant cheekbones and a nose that was strong but perfectly shaped.

She asked if she could keep the picture. He added his coms-number to it.

**Awesome Mix tape 2:** _Sparky Wilson: sunshine of your love._

They dated for about nine months. She was a research student at the electromechanical chemical centre at the same university as him, but on a different campus within the city. She loved seafood and was a keen amateur musician, but nothing about her was quite as musical as her laugh, and her large, vulnerable looking eyes were what comforted him most when the company he worked for and the dean of his facility sat him down and told him, without preamble, that he'd be better changing his course of study from architecture to architectural modelling. They made love most every night, and within two months Isha only really used her room in the post-grad dorm to change out of her lab coat on the way over to see him. Their break up was sad, but amicable: she'd been offered a place on a research project that included a funded doctorate and post-doc work in the field she wanted to pursue, in a different city, he'd just been offered a contract as a modeller at his company and wouldn't move away, and sweet as it had been, they both knew it wouldn't work long distance: they were both people whose silences said more than their words, and teleconferencing cannot replicate that. He walked her to the airport and wished her well. It seemed polite, and they owed each other that much.

That had been the last time he'd seen her for 19 years.

He'd been married for 14 of those, and his daughter was around eight. He did not know at that point that she'd not reach ten, but he still worried, as fathers will. If he feared for anything, it was that he and his wife might divorce.

Yvette was the love of his life, pure and complicated, because nothing is every quite that simple. The modelling job paid well, but he worked on commission by that point, mostly in wood, for vehicle designs. He'd known before he trained that computer-deign would always handle the final moulding of any architectural or vehicle project, but when he'd fist trained there was still a need for some to get a big block of foam and carve out in perfect detail what the finished ground car or building or boat would look like, so the designer could show executives and so the bodywork guys would know what they'd got themselves into. But 3D printing and a generation of designers taught from their first day at collage to think in 3D who knew how to make their own computer models had really reduced the work he was getting, and although his wife also worked and held down a pretty good job, money was tight, and the second job he took as a personal trainer _(he'd always been a fitness freak)_ left him next to no time with her. They'd fought. Bitter, bitter rows sometimes, and although the love was still there, deep as ever, Drax was a realist: he knew that sometimes that wasn't enough to stop people you loved leaving you.

If it was, no-one would die.

It was in a bar on the way back from the gym: one of the other trainers and Drax's occasional sparring partner was buying to celebrate getting his qualification to teach MMA and it would be rude to refuse, when he saw her. Well, she saw him. He was drinking a _paradisi _and tonic (_thirst-quenching but non-alcoholic_) when he heard the creak from behind him and a hand touched him gently on the shoulder. He turned and she was there.

The years had been kinder to her that they had any right to be, but those cheekbones would defy age, he'd always known that, and her eyes were as big as he remembered, and when he started in surprise to see her and spilt his drink, her laugh was as musical as ever.

He asked how she was, and introduced her to the guys from the Gym. She was well, amicably divorced, just in town for a conference, new research project, can't talk, company confidentiality and all that. She asked how he was, and made congratulatory and sympathetic noises at all the right points, and ooohed and ahhed over his daughter, as everyone of course should, and he oohed and ahhed over a picture of her son, a little younger, because it was only polite. He offered to buy her a drink, to be social, and she bought him one back, and quite soon both were a little drunk. She clapped him by the shoulder and pulled herself to her feet a little unsteadily, lab coat swirling, and he was the gentleman and called her a cab and walked her too it. As she got in she giggled.

"Hey, I just remembered." She said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a note book. "I found this the other day, clearing out some old stuff, and it was so pretty I just couldn't' bear to throw it away. Been using it as a Bookmark." She said, as she handed him a scrap of paper. "For you. She giggled, as she slid easily into the back of the cab, and was gone form his life again.

He opened up the paper.

There were some lab-notes, some equations scribbled in the margins, and the sun had faded it a little over the years, but on the paper a pretty girl smiled in a spring park, her friend barely an outline, like the cable car and the bandstand, and the spring of his youth came back to Drax, a spring where he was going to be a successful architect, and build cities that touched the sky, with the pretty girl form the park on his arm.

On the bottom, next to his old coms-number, she'd written out her hotel address and room number.

Drax hesitated, and then called a cab.

A chopstick flew past Drax's face, and he was rudely snapped back to the present (_except __of course that he had never left, that being in every real sense a bad metaphor)_ to discover that Rocket was standing on the table and howling at Quill as he looked for more things to throw. Gamora looked like she was about to join in and was only being held back by uncertainty as to which side, if any, to fight for. Quill realised he might soon me outgunned and decided a human shield was his safest route out of here and grabbed Groot and started yelling:

"Pax! Pax! No violence around the baby!" Rocket froze-up mid-pitch as he was about to lob his dammed ball at Quill _he's getting quite attached to that. It's just an old containment sphere _thought Drax.

"Coward!" snarled Rocket, putting the Sphere down and glaring at Quill's body as if seriously considering if he could slip something smaller than a ball, say a Taser-bolas, past without hitting Groot.

"But then he's only drop the pot." Muttered Rocket to himself as his fur settled back down from_ I'm angry and trying to make myself look big_ mode. Gamora scowled.

"Honestly, if none of you want to do anything useful-"

Drax Stood up. Clearly his expression gave something away, because all the others, even Groot stopped and looked to him.

"I have achieved something useful. I know what the package is."

"How could you possibly know what the package is?" scowled Rocket, as Drax stood up and walked over to his painfully neat sleeping area, and took out his wallet. "I mean we went over the guys known associates and on-line activity with a fine tooth comb, and we couldn't find a thing. He barely leaves the Motel exempt to go to that café and stare at the post-office and he never speaks to anyone, so what could you have found that _I_ missed?"

Drax opened his wallet to the front card-slips, he took out a picture of his wife, and for a moment his fingers, sure, strong sculptor's fingers trembled, before he reached_ under_ the picture and pulled out a smoke-stained scrap of paper.

"I found nothing. I heard Nothing. I was Taserd by someone I thought long dead, but they did not stay to talk about this Vince Sandhurst or his package. But none the less, I know what is in it." Said Drax, walking over, the scrap of paper delicately balanced on the fingertips off one hand.

"How?" asked Quill, frowning as Groot (_now quite bored_) pulled at his hair.

"Because I hold in my hand the thing that has caused me more regret than anything else in my life. Because Thanos has sent his minions to get this package before." Said Drax. "And my world and my family paid the price."

_Slam!_

The crew leaned in, as Drax pulled his steeple'd fingers away to reveal an old scrap of drafting paper on which smiled a young woman in the eternal spring of a life long ago.

"Ohhhh!" went Rocket, Gamora and Quill with sudden understanding.

"It's a package of pictures?" Asked Quill a second later, ruining the effect. Rocket winced and he and Gamora shared their _idiot captain_ look for a second.

"It's a package of _control._" said Gamora. "Total and complete control."

"But for me." Said Drax. "it was a package of _death_."

…

He paused.

"Was that an appropriate use of metaphor? The package did not in any literal sense contain death, it was just responsible for it."

"No, no that's good." Said Quill.

"Do I need to…?" said Drax, making the finger to the throat gesture.

"No, that was fine as it was." Said Quill. They all looked at the picture again.

"Kinda killed the mood of there a bit." Said Rocket.


	9. Bit of both Chapter 3: part 2

**Chapter 3. Old flames, Part2:**

**What becomes**

It was the sound, more than anything else:

They'd been on vacation, visiting the old farm where Drax had grown up, because people should understand where they come from, and despite it being a universal rule that any long journey with a child soon becomes a unique and personal slice of hell, Heather had never been like that and they'd all had an enjoyable trip and, as usual, were almost on time. Their family finances had stabilised and despite the rocky patch of the previous year Drax was feeling good about the future. They had recently refuelled the groundcars cell and Yvette was resting sleepily against his shoulder as he begun to drive across the desert. Despite the groundcar having climate control, Drax had wound down the window: he's always enjoyed the smell of the desert at night, and the cool air and quiet Agave scented desolation was a comfort.

There were a lot of stars out that night.

Drax guessed that this far from the light pollution of the city you would see so much better, and he went to say as much to his wife when he released that she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder. He smiled and shared a glance in his rear-view mirror with Heather, who giggled at her mother and went back to star-gazing thought the window-roof. Her eyes were wide and full, and Drax felt proud that his child always managed to find in even the smallest things the beauty and the wonder.

Heather's face froze and her brows creased in confusion.

"Da?"

"Yes?" he asked. She pointed.

Drax ducked his head slightly to see a higher angle in the mirror. A bright light was streaking across the sky parallel to the road they were on.

"A meteorite. You are privileged: people used to believe that to see one would bring luck."

Heather shook her head dismissively at such childishness as only a nine year old could. "meteorites don't change direction." She said, confused and suddenly, just a little afraid.

There was a deep _thummm_ as the meteorite made a second course-correction and zoomed down low. Suddenly the desert highway was lit in an unpleasant violet light, necrotic and throbbing. Yvette woke suddenly, and, confused, asked "What?"

(_for quite a long time afterwards Drax wondered whether she might have said something better than "What", or if he should have, but at that poit there was really noting else to say. It didn't stop him dwelling on it, though.)_

Drax stared stupidly, and like all fathers, went into explanation mode, even when unwarranted.

"It's a scout ship!" he said. He'd done a few models for military vessels in the last few years, and so knew all the major types. His world was neutral in the war between the Kree and Nova empires, but did business with both sides and favoured Nova as shamelessly as they dared without breaking their neutrality. His world was peaceful and unimportant: neither side came there.

"A scot ship?" asked his daughter.

_(… why those words?...)_

"A scout ship." He repeated. "Kree."

It was the sound, more than anything else.

No screeching. No bangs: just a _whump_ so loud you felt it in your chest and then a liquid sloshing, the surprisingly papery crackle of metal crumpling and the flex and pop the carbonate windshield as it deformed and spiderweb'd. With his head full of the nose, it took him a moment to realize that the sloshing was the liquid in his inner ear, and it was only then that he twigged that the car was rolling. The glove box deformed and the door popped off into his wife's chest and as its contents mixed with the litter from the footwall and the papers hung suspended in the vehicle like snow and he thought, dully, that he really should have kept the vehicle cleaner. It was a rental after all.

And then his safety-harness snapped and the centripetal force threw him out of the window that he, and only he, had opened, and into the desert air.

"Drax?"

Drax looked down. Rocket was standing by his foot, holding up a low-profile com unit, the sort that fit in your ear, Groot, and a worried expression.

"You okay big guy?" he asked, shifting Groot's pot so that his corsetry of Velcro splints took some of the weight: He was still too badly wounded to take point on this as he would have liked, and so Quill had put him in charge of running back-of-shop for this job.

"I am well." Said Drax, taking the com and inserting it into his ear. "I was just thinking."

"Uh-huh?" well, don't… don't think like that." said Rocket, looking at him sideways. Drax only then realised that he'd been cradling one of his knifes to his chest. He took it, picked some lint of the blade, and sheathed it, leaving an inch of blade showing so he could draw quickly.

"One mammal overly fond of his weapons to another, there are times of _worry_ me big-man." Said Rocket. "You gonna keep to the plan, or is this going to get personal?"

Drax considered this. "Both." He said, evenly. Rocket pulled a face, but put on his C2 headset and didn't comment.

"Com's check, com's check, com's check. Sound-off, you bald-bodies, and let's get this over with."

"G1 here."

"Q 1 here."

"D1 here." said Drax. The trick with call-signs was to make then as simple and memorable as possible, so that when you forgot them and screamed someone's real name in a fire-fight you looked like _right_ idiot.

"Okay, R1 and G2 running C2. Is it too much to ask that someone has eyes-mark-one on T1?"

"T1 one approaching rendezvous, right on schedule." Said Quill. "Heading for his usual spot… carrying a news-filmy. That's new."

"Weapon?" asked Rocket. There was a brief crackle of to-close-to-the-mic-idiot-breath as Quill shifted his position and then.

"Could be, big enough, wrapped into a cylinder. He's not unrolled it, so he's not interested in reading it. Too small for a nerco-blaster, Disrupter maybe."

Rocket sighed and pinched the bridge of his snout. "Fickin' perfect." He muttered, with the transmitter-off, before "G1, eyes on T2?"

"Leaving her motel. Concealed plasma-Taser. Possible concealed blaster. Observing and tailing."

"Heading?"

"Right for the Rendezvous."

Rocket nodded. "Affirmative." He looked to Drax. "Almost time to roll, big-guy."

Drax nodded. He would be glad to get down: Rocket had picked his spot well; the top of a concrete fed-silo in a farm on the edge of the star port. The Refuge camp had grown right up to the razor-ribbon fence of the farm and the new neighbours had scared off the farms owner giving them unlimited access and perfect views over the port, town and camp. It was, however, a hot, dusty exposed place, and they had been there since 0800 watching and waiting. It was 1157, in three minutes the local postal office would open and the trap would be sprung. Good: The spot had the rank, sticky smell of silage, and the concrete was already too hot to walk on underfoot.

Its grittiness reminded him unpleasantly of desert sands.

Rocket grunted and put down Groot in the shade of a miniature parasol, crudely lashed to a folding camp-chair of Quill's Rocket had found. He checked the com's relay once, just in case, and shuffled over to the long, thin buddle he'd had Drax bring up. He might be too badly hurt to run point, but as he'd told Quill, there was more than one way to skin a womp-rat, and the team needed him as more than a voice down a mic.

"R1 and D1 ready, and backstop running hot." Said Rocket, flipping the dust-cover off his railgun. It was an anti-material version, scratch-built from gods'-knew-what and at least four times as long as it's owner. The optics alone must have weighed nearly as much as Rocket did, but it was perfectly balanced around the bipod and he claimed it could penetrate the weak-spots on a Badoon grav-tank _behind_ the grav-tank you were aiming at, and that the advanced muzzle break made the recoil something that even his wounded shoulder could handle.

_(Quill had asked what would have happened if the muzzle break failed. Rocket grinned and said "Well, then I get my balls sanded off by the concrete and I shoot backwards off that silo at about mac three. But don't stress about it: that mountain-range will break my fall." To Drax's knowledge, there were no mountain ranges on this continent.)_

Rocket synced the weapon to the HUD on his C2 headset, and, wincing, lay down behind it. He kept one paw on an old medical gel-pack wedged under the buttstock, and squeezed it gently to force the stock up or down by minute amounts until he had the main drag of the town, specifically the dusty crossing between the Café and the postal-office, in his sights. The then pulled out the breach-flag and worked the bolt-action with a distinctive rattle and clunk. Drax looked at that surprised, and Rocket caught him looking out of the corner of his eye and shrugged.

"Yeah, ancient shit I know. I just like the noise, okay?" said Rocket, as Drax patted Groot on the head for luck, and begun to climb down the rungs set into the silo's side

Rocket squinted down the sights, giving any inhabitants of the town who might have happened to look up at the right moment a view of 10g's worth of liner-accelerator couplings, spite, and one overly magnified eye.

"Showtime." Muttered Rocket.

* * *

><p>Drax moved forward along the Edge of the refugee camp. The plan was to get him into a position where he could intercept if either of their targets managed to flee towards the camp or spaceport. If all else failed, Rocket was there to make sure no-one crossed their arbitrary Backstop line and made it into the camp, but given that actually firing that railgun across what amounted to an international border between two hostile nations would probably start a war, he'd got order not to do so unless lives were at stake.<p>

This made it pretty important that Drax was the one who stopped their targets escape, and that suited him just fine.

Sanding by the improvised border-control booth, he stopped and turned, looking up the main street. A wind blew little eddies of dust up and down and a paper-bag tumbleweed-ed along the wooden sidewalks in the backwash of an unmanned air-taxi as the Coms gave him a surreal little narration of what he could see.

"Okay, Q1 here, I can see T1 walking out across the street towards the front of the postal-office." Said Quills Voice as Vince Sandhurst appeared in a dust-stained white suit and bleached straw hat. Across the street, a feminine figure slipped buy on the edge of vison.

"G1, T2 is making her way towards the back of the Post-house." Said Gamora, and whilst Drax couldn't see her, he felt confident she was right behind the second target.

"R1, everything seems clear, we have zero, repeat zero civilians out in this heat, clear lines of fire. The second they get that package engage with extreme frickin' prejudice." Drax wondered what prejudice Rocket could have towards the targets given hat they were both of his race and Rocket had never behaved in a discriminatory manner towards him, but he put that question aside for later because _she_ had just stepped into view, elegant as ever, and hurrying towards the postal office.

Rockets voice sounded in his ear. "R1, I can see them on the hacked camera-feed from inside the post-room. T1 has the package, repeat, T1 has the package."

"Q1 ready across the street to intercept." Said a slightly tinny version of Quill's voce a frac5tion of a second after Drax saw him raise two fingers to his hidden coms-unit.

"G1 ready." Said Gamora's voice and T2, Isha, waited outside the postal office. It had seemed strange that Sandhurst only waited until the post office opened, and then left in a huff each day. What if the package arrived once the office was opened, in the afternoon? Seeing Isha waiting in the bar had let the team know that the office was watched in shifts, by two people. They had presumed Sandhurst was working alone because that's what the evidence they had suggested; they had never suspected an accomplice.

_That's what she is. Again._ Drax thought, as Vince Sandhurst stepped out of the postal office, Isha falling into place behind him as he begun to walk towards the space-port. Quill begun to walk parallel to them on the opposite sidewalk.

"Okay," said Rocket. " On my mark Spring the trap in three, two, on-"

And then Isha pulled out a plasma Taser and shot Sandhurst in the spine, and everything went wrong at once

Quill was no doubt just as surprised as anyone to find that Isha was _not_ in fact working with Sandhurst, but to his credit he didn't hesitate at all and flipped his helmet down and sprinted towards her, reaching for his blasters. It was however an incredibly stupid thing to do as all it did was cause her to notice him and swing around, trigger held down. The small laser in the plasma Taser ionised the air just enough for it to conduct electricity and so a glittering laser-straight beam swung across the street and moved-down everything in it's past, which other than dust and flies, was Quill. He went down spasming as his com-feed burst into static . Gamora suddenly materialised on the roof of an abandoned flop-house next to the postal-office and leapt down at Isha, a tranq syringe in each hand, when there was a _Bloop_ as the air-taxi hovering over the street focused it's forward safety shield onto her and fired a force-field bubble that knocked her backwards into and through the ply-board whorehouse wall. Isha snatched up the package and ran of r the air taxi, which pirouetted mid-air and came towards her, open-doored. Drax became suddenly adhere of rocket shouting down the com.

"I have a shot, yes or no? G1? Q1? Someone, anyone I have a shot!"

Drax watched the woman he nearly married reach for the taxi door, for the second time in his life. He raised he hands to his comn-bead.

"This is Drax. Take the shot."

There was a moment of agony and waiting, and then the air around the silo visibly budged and then bust into the sharp V or hypersonic flight. The air-taxi was joined to the silo by a thin line of friction-scorched air and suddenly leapt sideways ten feet, turned itself inside out mid-air, and showered the street with brightly coloured metallic confetti before its surviving engine pod started to leak oily black smoke that the enter thing drifted, gently, into the street next to the post-office and exploded.

Isha paused; hand still outstretched, and then looked down the street.

Their eyes met. And then the sonic boom from Rocket's overpowered military penis-enlarger washed over them, and threw Drax forwards into the dust.

* * *

><p>It was the sound, more than anything else.<p>

The desert sands felt gritty under Drax's back, and his head spun as the papers from the glove-compartment rained down on him. He felt that something important was happening, but for a moment he couldn't remember what.

The sound of his daughter crying out in pain brought him back to his senses.

His eyes snapped open, and he tried to sit up. He heard a hissing sound, and that, the desert air and and his daughter fear made him think _serpent_ until he remembered that he had been in a car crash. Groggily, he tried to sit up again, and found he could barely move. He looked down at his leg, and felt a little lightheaded surprise to see his own bone poking clearly though the meat of his thigh.

His daughter shouted again, in pain, and the hissing continued. _Gas tank_ he realised, with cold fear. The hydrogen cell had ruptured, and he'd filled up the tank with fresh H2 not an hour ago.

"Heather!?" he shouted. His daughter wailed back "Yvette!?" Silence.

He grabbed hold of his thigh, and begun to try and shuffle himself towards his car with his other leg, shouting all the while. It was a good thirty paces from where he had landed in the furrow his car had made in the dirt, to where the wreckage lay, and he made maybe five. He was aware of a pulsing blue light behind him. Of heavy footsteps. Police? He shouted for help.

Police. The police would help they would call the rescues services, and save his wife and daughter. He had to tell the police there were people still in that car. He had to tell them what had happed, tell them about that…

_Kree ship._ He thought.

The footsteps grew much louder, and then came to a halt just beside him. He saw armoured uniform boots, the haft of some poll-arm, and the hem of a robe of small, interlocking scales.

The tall Kree looked down at him from under the head-dress of an accuser of the Kree empire, impassive in his war-paint, and knelt down to pick something out of the rubble. A scrap of paper. He help it up and examined it in some detail it was old, and sun faded, but the drawing of the girl in the spring park was still clear as sin.

"A pretty picture." Said the Kree, looking down. "Your wife?" he asked, causally as the hammer resting on his shoulder begun to pulse with a sickly light as it charged up.

"Ronan!" yelled another Kree approaching. "We have searched the wreckage, and have yet to find any trace of-"

Ronan held out two fingers casually, silencing him, the picture between them like he was in a bistro and asking for the bill.

"Our reconnoitring of this world is almost complete?" he asked.

The Kree solder looked from Ronan, to the paper, t o the wounded man at his feet before replying, nervously "Yes sir."

"Good. Then we will return to the _dark aster_ and ready our attack."

The Kree soldier looked from Drax, to the wrecked groundcar, to Ronan. "My lord, there are two females in the ground car. One at least is still alive. "

_One at least…_ Drax's brain just stopped working at that point.

Ronan the accuser looked calmly and cooling into Drax's eye, whilst replying to his underling.

"Our attack must have complete surprise. There can be no witnesses to our recognisance."

Drax screamed, and tried to drag himself towards the car. The Kree soldier smacked him across the back with his weapon and pressed the muzzle to the back of his neck, when Ronan cut in, his voice soft.

"No weapons fire. Necro-blasts would be as telling a testament as survivors. It must look like an accident. Leave this one, he will not survive." He said, looking at the picture in his hand as if committing it to memory. He then tossed it back onto Drax's wounded leg, causally. "Let us finish here, we have much work to do."

The Kree solider licked his lip nervously and withdrew the weapon. "And the females?"

Rona looked to the solder, then back to Drax. He held out his hammer, and stepped to one side. Drax would always remember that afterwards, he stepped to one side, to give him a good view. He held out his hammer.

"Universal weapon." He said, in a high and commanding tone. The hammer bleeped and moaned as it woke up, and the violet light bathed all of them in its cloying radiance.

Drax heard Heather scream again, and the hissing of the gas. As a result he didn't hear the hammer bleep out, asking him to pick his ammunition type.

Ronan charged up the weapon, and pointed the hammer at the wrecked groundcar, almost bored. "Incendiary."

It was the sound, more than anything else.

* * *

><p>The dust was gritty under his hands. Drax woke to hear Quill and Rocket both screaming in his com.<p>

The sonic boom form Rockets' rail-gun had blown out every pane of glass in town, and some of the flimsier buildings in the shanty town had actually fallen over. The wrecked and smoking air-taxi was strewn over half the street in a way that was eerily familiar to Drax, and the first cogent thing he made out was Quill saying. "Rocket, I _really _hope that taxi was un-manned._"_

"Cry about that later, where's the fucking target?" screamed Rocket. "l do not have eyes on her, repeat, I do _not _have eyes on our mark!"

Drax saw Isha duck into a side alley. He was up and after her knives, out before anything as crude as thought was involved.

"I can see T2 and I am in pursuit." Said Drax, calmly as he spun in to an alley after her. The narrow, twisting back0streets were much cooler than the main roads and so far more crowed, and people were everywhere trying to see what the hell had just happened, it he thought he could still gain on her. "Is T1 secure, and what had happened to G1?"

There was a pause, as a clearly shaken Rocket tried to remember who had which call sign.

"G1's vitals are good, I'm monitoring her remotely. Look like she's had her com taken out by the blast from that taxi. Q1?"

""Um, yeah I've got target one cuffed and secure, tazed but unhurt, he has no package, repeat, no package. _Oh shit!" _ there was a crackle of weapons fire, and heavy breathing.

"Q1, call in! Q1 call in!" shouted Rocket.

"yeah, I have an unknown hostile, probably the guy who was controlling that taxi, fired upon me form a rooftop. He's fleeing towards the edge of the Kree shanty-town, G1 is in rooftop pursuit, I'm following at street level. The guy's a dead ringer for T1!"

"What?" yelled Rocket. "Wait, didn't the guy have a brother?"

"We can discuss that later." Said Drax, shoving though a crowd. They let Isha though easily enough, she was a woman, but a huge dust-covered man running along with a knife in each had provoked a differed response, and people were practically climbing over each other to get out of his way. He saw Isha reach a plywood board advertising something or other dumped up against the edge of the shanty-town, lift it to reveal a hole in the razor-fence, sand step though. "She is entering he Kree refugee camp, I am in pursuit."

"Negative, D1! I can't see you in there and I can't risk a shot, it's too crowded with civilians!" yelled. Rocket. "Let me pull back to the Milano, follow them when they try to leave on a ship and…" Rocket Squinted though his optics "and you've just gone through, haven't you?" he said.

"What gives you that impression?" asked Drax over the com, as Rocket watched panicked Kree refugees starting to pour out of alleyways near Drax's last location. Gamora reached the fence of the town and leapt over, landing on the roof on a shanty dwelling and rolling onto the next. There was a lick of Rocket-boots, and Quill sailed up to join her. Rocket watched in horror. "Ten units say they don't make it", he muttered to Groot.

Drax could hear Rocket and Quill exchange short, sharp status updates over the com, but it was just noise to him. The shanty town was a mess, an awful slum with no real street lay out and little sanitation, and in the heat and the dust it stank. He was getting some very unfriendly looks as he ran though, but worse ones from Isha as she stopped every few streets to try and tazer him. She'd be out of power soon, and he was gaining.

There were few real landmarks in the slum, and the fuel -tanks for the space-port loomed large over everything. It was to one of these that Isha seemed to be heading. He though he was about to catch her, when a hard-looking Kree steeped in front of him, brandishing a pick-axe handle. He slashed the weapon in half and punched him out with the pommel of one of his knives, but it cost him precious seconds and Isha had made it to the steps at the base of the tank.

He found her on the very top.

She was as beautiful as ever, wearing a Kree woman's head-scarf that snapped and popped in the wind as ships rose and fell behind her, and although her eyes were wild and her clothes dust-stained she kept the aim on the baster she had pulled out remarkably steady. The plasma tazer lay drained on the last step. He stropped, looked, and then stepped over it.

"Stop! Stop Drax, or I'll shoot.! I will you know!"

"Then shoot." He said, stepping forwards. Her eyes winded further still, but she kept the baster pointed at him.

"I never, I never wanted any of this. You have to understand, they left me no choice!"

"Choice? You betrayed your people. Or planet." He paused, and took in a deep shuddering breath, trying to keep the rage under con troll. "My family. I want…. Before I Kill you, I want to know why."

"Drax." Said a voice in his ear. "Drax you're not replying to D1 so fuck it. This is Rocket. Good thinking getting her high above the camp: I have a shot, big guy, but you keep getting your head in the way. Repeat, I have a shot on her, just take a step to the left and we can end this."

Drax ignored him, and advanced on Isha. "Stay away!" she screamed, and pulled the trigger on the blaster. A shot pinged into the steel of the fuel-tank by his foot, but didn't penetrate. This time. Drax froze for a second, his face blank, and then took another step forwards. She screamed again. "Stay away! I had no choice!"

"You will not escape this rooftop. You saw what my friend's rifle will do. If you shoot me, he will gun you down. If you shoot to miss again, you might burst the fuel tank and kill us both and many Kree. You are defeated. So, just tell me why you did it. He sheathed one knife, and reached into his pocket, and pulled out a scrap of paper. Isha stared, on the paper, Isha looked back at her.

"I drew this because you asked me to, kept it because I had feelings for you, and all I want to know, Isha, all I want to know is one thing. That night when we met up, that night we got drunk, did you give this to me because you wanted to elicit an extra-marital affair," he said, showing the picture, and then turning it though ninety degrees so the scribbled lab notes in the margin were readable. "Or was it because you knew Thanos was hunting whoever had this formula?"

* * *

><p>It was the sound, more than anything else.<p>

The lab burned, screaming alarms and flashing light adding to the chaos and confusion. Kree and Sakaarans shouted and screamed and Drax grappled with them. He'd made it to the capitol in time to warn the people, and the people, hadn't listened. A widower, driven mad with grief and, some said guilt that he'd fallen asleep at the wheel, seeking to put the blame of Kree UFO's forcing him of the road. The war was over, Kree and nova were signing a peace deal, and only a few rouge officers on each side would keep fighting.

Then, six months later, the _dark aster_ hit.

He'd come there to confront her about the picture, about the formula once he figured it out. To kill her, If he was honest with himself. He'd just had the bad luck to pick the day that Ronan invaded the city. They day he'd come for the rest of that lab's research. The Kree invasion had suddenly justified him and his warnings, but it had put bodies between him and his revenge.

He'd stopped a necro-blaster, he didn't remember from where, and made it onto her floor. He killed people, his own people, to get there.

He was too late. Rona stood at the end of the corridor as the lab brunt abound him, holding her by the back of the neck like a pet that might bite with one hand, and studying her notebook with the other, showing a faint distaste as if trying to pick the least-awful thing of a bad menu. Drax screamed and fired a necro-blast at him. He was not good with guns, and missed by a good yard. Rona looked up, uninterested, as Drax charged him. He threw Isha into a wall with a flick of a wrist and drew his hammer and thrust it lazily at him. The universal weapon pulsed and Drax was flung back as if he'd run unto a brick wall.

Rona calmly looked at the book, and as Drax lay there stunned on the ground, found what he was looking for. A gap on an otherwise full page. He paused, and very carefully wrote, from memory, the formula. He then handed the book to the figure next to him and said "that completes _my_ side of the bargain."

The figure next to him leaned out of the shadows, unconcerned with smoke or flame, and looked at the book. He then nodded and made some minute adjustments to something under his robe, and pulled out a hunk of stage metal. Drax was no expert, but it looked chitari, he then turned to a wall behind him, and snapped his fingered. One of Ronan's Sakaarans dragged Isha over, and held her face to the renal scanner.

The wall slid back, and there in a hidden high-power containment unit floated… something, a stone, perhaps, something small and blue-grey and lit from within. The hooded figure, leaned in with the chitari sceptre and, carefully, toughed it to the thing. It snapped into place in a slot for it at the end of the sceptre, and the figure withdrew it and hid it under his robe.

Ronan frowned. "What manner of thing is _that?"_ the figure chuckled, but did not reply. His face was withered and grey, scared and hidden with some sort of weird metal mesh. Ronan frowned.

"I will work out whatever it is that makes you value that so much."

"Mayhaps. But not in my lifetime, I think. One down… my master will be most pleased, he will give you the power to cloak your ship form Nova, you may go where you wish, and you will not be seen."

"And the power to destroy Xandar?"

The hooded figure held up the chitari sceptre again. "One down, one reward. Find your master the next item, and you will have what you wish. Come." He swept from the room, and to a hole in the adjacent wall. He boarded a necro-craft, and like that, was gone. Ronan looked to Isha "he research has been valuable. Spare her, if she comes." He said, before walking onto the next craft.

Isha turned to look at Drax, her eyes swelling with tears in the smoke, but then she turned her back on him and, crying, stepped into the craft too.

* * *

><p>"Drax!" screamed Rocket. "She just put a fucking round into the fuel tank! Step aside, and I have a shot on the crazy bitch! Just step to the left!" Yelled Rocket, snapping him out of his memory.<p>

"Drax, this is Quill. As much as I want everyone to get out of this alive and _never _see that gun fired again, Ranger dickwad there has a point. Just take one step to the left, and let Rocket deal with it. I don't know what history you two have, but this is no time to make it person-"

Drax pulled out his ear-com, and threw it over the edge of the tank.

"I just need to know if you knew." Drax said. "I just need to know why." He said stepping forwards. Isa winced, and pulled the trigger again. It burnt into the tank next to his foot, but didn't pierce it.

"I just need to know why." He said, taking the gun out of her hands, and giving her the picture."

Crying silently, Isa stared deep into his eyes, and then pulled out something from her clothes. Drax watched. It would not be a weapon: she had proved that she could not kill him already.

It was a picture. He'd seen it before at that bar, on the way back from the gym. A young boy, about his daughter's age.

"They took my son… Ronan's scout party, they knew what I was researching, so they took my son." Drax watched, and, knife in hand, put one and on her shoulder, and raised the other one.

"I know. "He said, as his had moved.

"I know." He said, as he, gently, patted her on the other shoulder the exact moment a sweeting and painting Gamora ran onto the roof. He looked to her, and nodded. She lowered her sword, and nodded back.

"I think we need to take Isha and her friend, and have a talk." He said.

Isha stared weeping. Somehow, that still had the power to hurt him.

It was the sound, more than anything else.

* * *

><p>"I…I just got drunk. I was lonly, and horny, and had had a little too much, and I gave him my room number. I honestly didn't realize the formula was on there." She said.<p>

Quill, Groot and Drax stared. They were back on the Milano, with Isha, (_target two) _ Vince Sandhurst _(target one_), and Isha's mystery taxi-hacker who, predictably, turned out to be prominent fellow scientist Baz Sandhurst, his brother .

They all looked to Gamora, who had her fingers on Isah's pulse, and Rocket, who was standing near-by to give the expert opinion of his nose. Gamora nodded, and rocket said "True." Between he two of them they were a pretty good living lie detector. Reference qu3estiosn had taken half an hour, and Gamora had spent longer letting Rocket re-wire her bionics to detect changes in skin conductivity with her fingertips.

"You hand no idea?" asked Drax. Crying, Isha shook her head.

"It was two days before I realised that part of the equation was missing. When I worked out what had happened, I called you to try and get the picture back. I sent letters, came round you house, everything. You wouldn't answer or see me."

Drax stared. "I thought you were trying to start an affair. I burnt your letters unopened."

"You had no idea?" asked Baz, who had been one of her co—workers on trying to discover what their mystery stone was and why it made people more venerable to suggestion. Drax shook his head. "None. And you had No idea that Thanos would send Ronan after it?"

Isha shook her head. Gamora and Rocket nodded.

"And your son?" asked Drax. He'd heard her some was missing after Ronan attack, and put two and two together soon after.

"We managed to escape from Ronan's ship." Answered Baz. "He held us captive in lab, so we had access to plenty of materials to override his teleport controls."

"Frickin' armature." Muttered Rocket. "Never lock someone in a store-cupboard, let alone a lab."

"We fled into the Kree empire. Hooked up with a resistance group who helped us continue our research. This… this mind stone, if that's what it is." Said Baz, "I nearly died as a child. Xandarian TB. After my brother so kindly sabotaged my lab out of envy as well, I've had uncontrollable shaking. Post-traumatic stress, they say, after the explosion. All I've wanted my whole life, was control: control enough to fix myself. PTSD. The breathing problems, the shakes… this stone, the power it gave for autohypnosis, simply undoing the PTSD, curing mental illness with a single touch, the potential applications... we had to pursue it."

Rocket snorted. "And the Weaponised mind-control , that was just a plus? A perk? I know how things go down in labs with lots of defence spending behind them, and let me tell you, it wasn't just curing vets of their PTSD that got your military to fund you! It's all fun and games at the start and then there electrodes and REM depravation and-" Rocket noticed the other staring.

"I don't trust the military –industrial complex, is all."

"Says the guy whose gun just levelled a shanty town by being too noisy!" said Quill. "It's a miracle no-one died!" Baz leaned in. "After Ronan's death, the research we had done under him was up for grabs. We found out and came to collet it. Vince is my next of kin, and we were missing assumed dead. He knew he could make a small fortune selling info on the mind-stone, and so had all the remaining research sent to him. I found out, and we decided we had to stop him."

"Why not call nova?" asked quill.

"We don't trust them." said Isha.

Rocket snorted. "Got that about right."

Quill looked at the package. Another non-digital, un-hack-able harddrive: a notebook.

"And this is it all?" he asked.

Baz and Isha nodded.

"and you say you need it for your resistance group, and to work on a PTSD cure?"

They nodded. Quill ran his fingers though his hair. A hard one.

"Oooookay. Here's what we're going to do. a copy of this goes to Nova, to Dey. _All _of it. " he added, before either Baz or Rocket could object. "We hand in this, and your brother, for the reward, and you get the original. That way there's, like, a balance of power: no one group has this mind-control stuff, but both you and nova get a chance to use it for good, and if either of you uses it for evil I bet the other will be there to stop them. Mutually assured destruction." Quill paused. 2and we keep a copy too, in case both you _and _nova choose to act like total dicks."

Baz frowned.

"I suppose there's no room for negotiation on this?"

"Not unless you want us to sell you and your resistance group to the Kree for a quick buck." Said Quill. Rocket looked at him approvingly.

"You don't know that you can trust them!" said Isha.

"yeah, but they're not the ones who tazed me today, so lets call it quits." Said Quill. He checked his watch.

"And now, if you want to get that transport to meet up with your resistance buddies, we better get a move on."

It took a surprisingly long time to clear security at the space-port. Apparently some psychotic vandal had destroyed an unmanned air-taxi with some sort of super-weapon, and after that everyone was understandably jumpy. The Kree were looking for some know resistance members on their side of the border too, but Rocket made a pretty good fake ID and so Mr Murray Burnett and Miss Joan Alison made it through un-scathed.

Drax walked her to the space-ship. It seemed polite, and she owed her that much at least.

"I.." she said. 2if I had known, your family.."

"You didn't." he said.

Her face took on a very strange shade. "but after that, after I heard they were dead-"

"Ronan had your child. Any other reason, and I think I might had killed you but protecting your only child?" he looked at his hands. They were scarred and callused, and he had killed more people with them that he liked to think about. "That I understand. I cannot forgive you it, but I can understand that you must find a way to cope. As must I."

"I… that day, in the bar, when I gave you the paper… I really thought you were going to follow me to my room. I saw you call a taxi to follow and everything."

Her smiled, sadly. " did. I made it almost all the way to your hotel when we passed that park, where we drew that picture. It's a wreck now, ugly children's pay areas and fast food outlets. I reminded me that what we had, was in the past, and there was no getting that back. He looked at his hands, where he still wore the battered ring.

"I was a married man, Isha. I still am." He looked up. Baz is the father of your child." It was not a question.

She nodded. "Does he know?" she hesitated, and then nodded. He nodded back. A workplace affair would explain her 'amicable divorce '. She hesitated. "But I don't love him. Come with me, we can do so much to undermine the Kree, to get revenge on them for-"

"For what you helped Ronan do. No. I still have some feelings for you, I admit, but it can never work. It couldn't that day in the bar, it barely even worked that day in the park. You have to go on that ship, and make your way, make amends for that you've done, as best you can, or regret it for the rest of your life." He looked at his hands.

"We do what we have to do. I'm sorry."

He turned his back, and walked away. He heard Baz Sandhurst call her name, so she must have loitered, but he didn't look back until he heard the ships engines fire up. As he turned then, he saw here waiting at one of the viewing slits, and then the girl in the park was gone.

**Awesome mix tape part 2: **_What becomes of the broken hearted;_ Jimmy Ruffin

Quill walked up to him. "You okay bro?

Drax considered this.

"I have felt better, I admit, but I do not believe that we are related."

"Could be, sein' as he don't know who his dandy is. If it were me I'd check that out Asap." Said Rocket followed by "Ow!" and Gamora shushing. Quill continued.

"I just want you to know, you ever have any, yanno, any stuff about your past, about what happened, the whole quest for vengeance thing, you know you can share that with us? Right? I promise we won't freak out. We're all just as screwed up as you are. Rocket's probably even worse."

"Hey at least you got to meet _one_ of your parents, Hey quit it Gamora. Bully."

Gamora held a hand to her ear. "What's that Rocket? I can't hear you over the tinnitus that I and _every other person_ in this shity hick town has now thanks to you."

"Ain't no cause to take Natasha away from me!"

"Seriously, you name your guns? I think taking that monstrosity away from you counts as both self-defence _and_ an intervention."

Quill ignored the bickering behind him, and eyed up Drax as Drax considered his offer. Eventually, Drax nodded.

"Agreed. No matter how personal, you are my captain. If I have emotional issues that might affect my actions. I will endeavour to let you know in advance."

Quill grinned, and held out his hand. 2Out it there, buddy." Drax stared.

"Put what exactly?"

"I… you know, never mind." It's just good we're being honest and open with each other." said Quill, slapping Drax on the back and putting an arm around him until he realized that forced him to step on tip-toes.

"This could be the start of a beautiful friendship." Said Quill.

Drax considered this. "I had assumed that we were already friends."

"I… no, that's… I'm doing Casablanca, your story, what just happened, it and parallels to an old movie I saw once." Drax gave him a blank expression. "You're right, never mind, let's all shut up, walk home, sell Vince to the cops and get drunk in that bar. I think I saw a nightclub that's nerved booze until one am.

"Club Brazzaville" supplied Rocket helpfully.

"Should you be drinking on your medication?"

"Meh, at least it will be a cheap night out."

"Fair enough." Said Quill, as they all walked off into the sunset.

"Quill, since we are now being completely open with each other I must warn you that if you do not remove you harm form around my shoulders, I will rip out your spine."

"Opps, sorry there." said Quill, shifting who's hand was on whose back.

"Same with me." said Gamora.

"Fair enough."

"Hey, what are me and Groot, chopped Badoon liver?"

"You bite people who try to hug you."

"Yeah, but I should get the opportunity same as everyone else!"

"You're all idiots." Said Drax.

* * *

><p>"They're all idiots." Said Baz Sandhurst, opening his cabin door on the ship. "We've got nothing to worry about my dear."<p>

"But what if one of them works it out?" said Isha? "What if they look at their copy of the research and realise-"

"They'll never crack that cipher, the notes on stage two trials were hidden within the notes for stage one. Nova might, five, ten years down the line. By then it will be too late, we'll have gone to product and be in beta testing. We can't be caught." He said, reaching in and taking her hands. "and if we are, we'll just kill them. But seriously, they even bought that guff about the resistance cell: you'd think that they would have been a little more paranoid, they try a cut-rate polygraph on you after we've admitted were working on mind control and autohypnosis? They deserve what they get if they believed that. They _all_ derive what they're going to get, he said, looking sideways.

They suit wasn't ready yet it was still missing a few components that he couldn't get, but now they had the old research back, he could bargain to get what he needed. He grinned, and in the light of the cabin's bare bulb, the flat discs of the drone stood silent, in their neat wracks like dead things.

_not dead _he thought_ waiting._

"Ah if only my brother could see this. He always liked to play his games, think that he knew oh so much, that he was in control…. No._ I_ am the controller, no-one else…"

"Are you coming to bed, dear?" said Isha, as she walked into her adjoining cabin, holding the heavily sound-proofed door open with one hand.

"No, not yet: we've lost far too much time on that planet, and I want to catch up on my phase two trial. Call K.L.S for me, and tell them that we are ready to press on, and that I want what's coming to me." He paused. "Oh, and tell them that I think I've found some of their lost property too. Doctor Kessler will be so pleased to hear that."

Isha nodded, and closed the door. he'd be an hour least, she knew.

He went over to the wrack of drones by the wall, and activated one. Now that he had the equation back, he should start to see real progress.

The first of the crates next to the wall was plastic, a yard by a yard, like all the others, heavy duty, easy clean, blank except for a series of air-hole, and a stylised wedge-shaped corporate logo. It looked like the top of an arch, marred by a stylised keyhole for an old-fashioned mortise lock. He popped the seals and opened it. As always the stink it him before anything else.

It filched aways from the light and tried to slink back into the corner when it saw him, and it shuddered when it saw the drone. It knew what came next.

Even though he was making good progress, was getting close to proper control, part of him still, foolishly, weekly, found this part distasteful.

It was the sound, more than anything else.


	10. Toothbrush

_Drip. Drip. Drip. _

Rocket adjusted the tap and, balancing with some difficulty, reached for his toothbrush, and begun to scrub.

"Why is this so frickin' hard? He asked. "I mean, yeah, they could have put the sink lower down but seriously, does it need to be this difficult? Would it have killed them to lay out the ergonomics just a little better?" he asked, running the tap and taking a gulp, which he sloshed about before spitting into the sink.

"The author would like to _apologise_ for the lateness of this chapter. Yeah, I mean, It's still_ technically_ on Sunday, but it's past ten in the night if you're in GMT like he is, and that's just unprofessional. He shoulda done more of it during the week rather than rushing it out like this, but hey, you knew the guy was a bit off when you signed on, right?" said Rocket, spitting and scrubbing again.

_Drip. Drip. Drip. _

"I mean, normal people don't write fanfic. Wish _I_ had known that before I let myself get involved." Rocket started at himself in the mirror, and shrugged.

"Truth is, things aint been great at work for him, and he's been feeling a little down, so next episode we're getting a lighter-hearted adventure, 'cause he's been in a dark place this past week, and he needs a breather, an' even if he's down it aint right for him to inflict all that on you." He said, turning the tap. There was a _hissss _of leaking hydrogen, and the tap shuddered and spat desert sand.

"Bad enough he inflicts this shit on his characters." Said Rocket, picking sand off his toothbrush and trying to clean he teeth once more. "I mean, you try being written by someone who feels an little low and watches too much Twin Peaks. It an't fun. I fee like I'm in an Alan Moore-ish, Dave Hopkins-y kinda story here. "

_Drip. Drip. Drip. _

Rocket looked at the sand. And then the taps. Both were turned off. There was no water.

Slowly, he looked down at exactly what he was standing on to reach the sink. The camera panned back. The sink and mirror were the one from the Milano that Rocket was used to, but beyond that there was just a shadowy void, and he was spot-lit in the middle, standing on a battered trasit crate of grey, wipe-clean plastic. A thick dark liquid was seeping out of the air-holes.

_Drip. Drip. Drip. _

"Ah." Said Rocket, returning to his tooth-brushing. "foreshadowing." She spat, and he sighed. Why was this so frickin' hard? It would be a lot easier to clean his teath if the mirror would just showed his actual face, rather than just his bionics. But then again, they were _him_, when you got down to it, weren't they?

There was fur on his toothbrush.

He realised that there was nothing wrong with the mirror the same time he noticed the figure behind him.

On his hammock on the _Milano_, Rocket Racoon woke screaming.


End file.
